On the second floor of the newly opened Business Hall, home of the William G. Rohrer College of Business at Rowan University, you’ll see a sweeping, 4,000 sq. ft. space surrounded by glass walls. Huge banners declare the area as “Hatch House.”
Hatch House, at first glance, is a campus co-working space and the newly minted home for those interested in pursuing their own venture or a career driven by the entrepreneurial mindset. When you dig deeper, you see Hatch House as a series of dedicated programs for both students and faculty. These initiatives are aimed at extending innovation and entrepreneurship to faculty and students across all academic backgrounds while bridging resources from the Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia regions.
Over the past few years Rowan has made a major commitment to entrepreneurship, including establishing a partnership with Hatch House Ventures in March 2016 to open and run a Hatch House on the Rowan campus. At that time Steve Boerner, President of Hatch House Ventures, LLC, came onto campus to gain insight as to how the program would function and what areas deserved special attention.
“I was intent on listening before planning,” said Boerner. “I conducted interviews with students, faculty and community members. It was clear that building a team approach was critical to meet the needs of the college’s entrepreneurial community.”
Dr. Cheryl Bodnar, who is now the Hatch House Academic Director at Rowan and also Assistant Professor in the Experiential Engineering Education Department (ExEEd), joined Boerner in helping to establish Hatch House on campus. On the academic side Bodnar uses game-based learning and other active learning strategies to infuse entrepreneurial mindset concepts in her classes. Through a newly developed innovation and entrepreneurship faculty certificate program she is now able to share these techniques with faculty across the college.
“Working directly with faculty to share with them how critical an entrepreneurial mindset can be to their students is a great way to reach students from all disciplines. Through this approach, we will be able to reach many more students than we could do with just student initiatives alone.,” said Dr. Bodnar.
While Dr. Bodnar applies the majority of her Hatch House dedicated time to faculty initiatives, such as the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Training Certificate Program, Boerner primarily focuses on student initiatives.
Hatch House is part of a larger Entrepreneurship Across Campus (EAC) initiative at Rowan pioneered by Dr. Sue Lehrman, Dean of the Rohrer College of Business, and launched in partnership with the Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering and the College of Science & Mathematics. Hatch House is seen as a third party advocate, helping to spur an entrepreneurial culture throughout the University. It is a continuation of what Boerner began as a 2014 graduate of Lehigh University’s Master’s of Technical Entrepreneurship program and it is now on three campuses, including the University of Delaware.
“Many programs across the country tend to silo entrepreneurship into just the business or engineering programs,” said Dean Lehrman. “At Rowan, students from any discipline can connect and consult with Hatch House and utilize their resources.”
Hatch House also oversees competitions to highlight innovation, such as the Rohrer Business Model Competition, a four-round contest, which concludes with finalists pitching their models in a Shark Tank®-like format. In addition, there is an eight-week startup accelerator in which the best startups on campus are jumpstarted with financial support, outside mentorship pairings, free technology platforms, and a wealth of dedicated resources.
“The Hatch House Startup Accelerator gives them real life experience,” said Boerner. “We want to make sure they’re well-seeded with opportunity.” The program’s demo-day showcases Rowan’s startups to investors, potential customers, and mentors willing to contribute to their success.
In the near future, a recently established Hatch House Seed Grant Fund will support the funding received by student startups in the accelerator program. This donation-backed seed-fund was created in partnership with the Rowan University Advancement Office. The fund is designed to provide non-dilutive grants to aid startups that are not quite mature enough to apply for investing while giving them the experience to prepare them for doing so.
In February Dr. Eric Liguori was hired as the Rohrer Professorial Chair in Entrepreneurship and will start in July. Dr. Liguori will serve as the Executive Director of the Rowan Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, under which Hatch House resides. Dr. Liguori, who comes from the University of Tampa, will bring leadership to the team, drawing on a wealth of experiences to elevate Rowan University’s entrepreneurial ventures to the next level.
“It’s all about the entrepreneurial mindset and empowering students to take ownership of the space. When they buy-in, amazing things happen,” said Boerner.
Beyond classes and curriculum, Rowan is fostering an entrepreneurial community, continuously adding new students, faculty, and mentors to the foundation that supports the Entrepreneurship Across Campus (EAC) movement.
“Being fairly new, I feel like I’m part of a family here at Rowan,” said Boerner. “Like others before and after me, I’ve been welcomed in a very substantial way.”
