Two Rice faculty receive national Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu

Two Rice faculty receive national Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award

HOUSTON – (Jan. 11, 2016) – The founders of the Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business’ globally recognized entrepreneurship program were recognized today with the 2016 Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award, one of three lifetime awards presented by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) at the organization’s annual conference in San Diego.

ED WILLIAMS

Ed Williams, professor emeritus of entrepreneurship, launched the Jones School’s graduate entrepreneurship program in 1978, long before the academic discipline of entrepreneurship had been established and before most universities were teaching the subject. Shortly thereafter, Williams recruited Al Napier, professor of entrepreneurship and psychology, to expand the entrepreneurship curriculum. These efforts laid the foundation for Rice’s entrepreneurship program, which has grown to more than 30 courses today and resulted in the Jones School’s ranking among the top 10 graduate entrepreneurship programs by Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine for seven years in a row.

USASBE, the world’s largest independent professional academic organization dedicated to advancing the discipline of entrepreneurship, presents the award annually to an entrepreneurship educator who has provided distinguished leadership in the field and contributed greatly to the way scholars think about and approach entrepreneurship teaching and learning. The selection committee cited Napier’s and Williams’ contributions to the field over their careers in its recommendation of them for the award.

AL NAPIER

“Ed and Al’s distinguished leadership and scholarship are inexorably linked over a combined 54 years at the Jones Graduate School of Business,” said Brad Burke, managing director of the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship. “As tenured, full professors of entrepreneurship at Rice University, they have contributed substantive advancements in creating the discipline of entrepreneurship (starting in 1976), establishing the first university entrepreneurship courses in the U.S., building the entrepreneurship program at the business school, shaping the entire curriculum and establishing the first major in entrepreneurship.”

The impact that Williams and Napier have had on Rice MBA students has been substantial, Burke said. Based on a 2009 study, 22 percent of Rice MBA alumni have started one or more companies, and 76 percent of those were still in business at the time of the survey, higher than the national average for startups. As one former MBA student said, “Al Napier and Ed Williams are the reason I became an entrepreneur, which has led to building an international retail franchise of 150-plus locations.” The alum took both Napier’s and Williams’ classes and said the fundamentals they taught are used daily “in my journey as an entrepreneur.”

Williams was previously recognized as one of the top three entrepreneurship educators in the country by BusinessWeek magazine in 1996. Napier is the winner of the 2008 Acton Award, a national award for excellence in entrepreneurship education. They have taught more than 3,000 students — more than half of the total Jones School alumni — in more than 100 courses over 36 years. Based on the set of entrepreneurship courses Williams and Napier helped launch, the Jones School received the USASBE National Model MBA Entrepreneurship Program Award in 2011.

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For more information, contact Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations at Rice, at 713-348-6775 or jfalk@rice.edu.

Follow the Jones Graduate School of Business via Twitter @RiceMBA.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Related materials:

Napier bio: http://business.rice.edu/Albert_Napier.

Williams bio: http://business.rice.edu/Edward_Williams.

Jones Graduate School of Business: http://business.rice.edu.

USASBE: www.usasbe.org.