P.D. Merrill Lecture speaker invites audience to meet their inner entrepreneurs
On April 4, 2019, the University of New England welcomed Donna M. De Carolis, Ph.D., founding dean of the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship at Drexel University, as the presenter at the twelfth annual Paul D. Merrill Business Ethics Lecture on UNE’s Portland Campus. The lecture, titled “Ready Set Fail … Meet Your Inner Entrepreneur,” was held at Innovation Hall on UNE's Portland Campus.
As founding dean of the Close School of Entrepreneurship, the nation’s first independent degree-granting school of entrepreneurship, De Carolis initiated a pioneering approach to entrepreneurship education. Her vision is to empower all university students with the belief that they can be entrepreneurs -- by broadly defining entrepreneurship as an attitude that incorporates innovative thinking and doing in all facets of life, career and profession.
University President James Herbert, Ph.D., expressed the sentiment that De Carolis is an ideal speaker for this annual UNE event. “UNE has long been an institution with an entrepreneurial spirit, and we want to instill that spirit in our students as well,” he said. This lecture will be a tremendous opportunity for our UNE community – including the community at large – to learn how to recognize the entrepreneurial nature that exists in all of us and to discover how best to cultivate it for success.”
De Carolis’ talk addressed the universality of the entrepreneurial spirit as well as the benefits of teaching entrepreneurship at institutions of higher education. “Everyone is an entrepreneur at heart,” she said. “But education plays an important role in cultivating skillsets applicable to innovation and in instilling entrepreneurship as a habit of mind – an approach to life – because often, it involves a mindset change.”
She also explored the concept of failure, noting that it should not necessarily be viewed negatively. “People often think of failing as the opposite of success,” she said, “but failure is really a complement to success, not its opposite. It’s an opportunity to ask yourself, ‘How do I manage my options?’”
Well-known throughout the Philadelphia region as a speaker and media personality, De Carolis contributes weekly commentaries to KYW Newsradio and serves on several local boards, including the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Exchange. Her research has appeared in numerous journals, and she is the recipient of the prestigious Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching as well as the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs’ 2015 Iris Newman Award, given annually to a woman business leader who has demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing women entrepreneurs. She earned her doctoral degree in strategic management from Temple University and holds an MBA from Villanova University.
The Paul D. Merrill Business Ethics Lecture Series, sponsored by UNE’s Department of Business, honors the late Paul D. (P.D.) Merrill, Portland-area business leader and longtime UNE trustee, supporter and friend. The series was created to inspire business and community leaders to think about topics relating to ethics and to integrate a values-based way of thinking into their work and everyday lives.