Doug and Lois Garland’s Gift Helps Engineering Students Learn to Think Like Entrepreneurs

Doug (SE ’87) and Lois (CS ’83, ’87) Garland gave $100,000 to the Engineering School to establish an Engineering Entrepreneurship Fund to support undergraduate research and to encourage students to learn how to think like entrepreneurs.

Doug, who has held senior executive positions with Sprint, Yahoo! and Google and advised leading venture capital firms, knows the value that can come from turning new ideas into big business. "Living in Silicon Valley," he says, "We’ve seen students at local universities leverage the start-up ecosystem and forgo conventional career choices in favor of starting companies based on their innovations."

We wanted to help educate Engineering School students to allow them to have the same kinds of opportunities.”

The fund was used last spring to award $25,000 to Ride Forward, the winner of the spring 2009 Translational Seed Grant Competition, in support of its efforts to create a company that converts fleet vehicles to electric power.

This year the fund will provide prizes for the winners of the Entrepreneur Concept Contest, scheduled for November. Each Engineering School team will submit descriptions of ideas for a start-up business or product and will present their proposal to judges in a “live-fire” competition. Winner of that contest will represent the Engineering School in the Virginia Cup, a University-wide competition, at the end of November.

“The gift makes a real difference in what we can do to help our students hone their skills as entrepreneurs and develop their ability to identify significant new technology opportunities,” says Professor Bernard Carlson, coordinator of the engineering business minor. “We want to help our engineering students learn to leverage their technology expertise and identify significant opportunities that they can pursue as entrepreneurs.”