Marco Da Rin receives prestigious Comenius grant for 'Entrepreneurial Literacy Initiative'
NWO/NRO has awarded dr. Marco Da Rin, associate professor of Finance at Tilburg School of Economics and Management, a Comenius Senior Fellowship. This was recently announced by NWO. He receives the Fellowship for his 'Entrepreneurial Literacy Initiative', a technology-enabled platform to provide students with knowledge and tools to understand what an entrepreneurial career is, whether it suits their talents and ambitions, and how to build it up.
While a staggering 20% of Dutch graduates aspire to become entrepreneurs, current educational offerings do not help prepare for it. Bachelor or Master entrepreneurship degrees fit students who already decided to start a business. We instead target students who are considering a future entrepreneurial career in the subject they are studying (be it marketing, psychology, or engineering). The “Entrepreneurial Literacy Initiative” will use a technology-enabled platform to provide master students with tools to plan an entrepreneurial career rationally:
- knowledge about facts and concepts to understand the challenges of entrepreneurship;
- a method to assess whether an entrepreneurial career can fulfil their ambitions and build it;
- soft skills necessary to manage an entrepreneurial career.
The aim is to develop a technological, content and methodological infrastructure.
The programme will be elective, requiring about 50 hours (2 ECTs) over six months, and will award edubadges to successfully attending students. Da Rin targets about 1,000 students over two years. Study association Asset enthusiastically and actively supports the initiative.
The inspiration comes from the “Global Financial Literacy” initiative at Georgetown University (USA), a project grown into a global initiative that provides an educational platform for basic financial education. Da Rin aims to parallel it for entrepreneurship education.
I am personally elated by the possibility to lead this initiative, and grateful to NRO for granting me this prestigious Fellowship. I hope the Entrepreneurial Literacy Initiative will bring cohorts of students to reflect on the possibility, on the risks and rewards of becoming involved with creating entrepreneurial ventures
– Marco Da Rin
Marco Da Rin is associate professor of finance at TiSEM and an active scholar in the field of entrepreneurial finance and public policy. He has a PhD from Stanford University and has taught at many universities in several countries. He is the author of “Fundamentals of Entrepreneurial Finance” (with Thomas Hellmann), Oxford University Press, 2020.
Comenius Programme
The Comenius programme contributes to the innovation and improvement of higher education in the Netherlands. The programme includes three different grants: the ‘Teaching Fellow’, ‘Senior Fellow’ and ‘Leadership Fellow’ grants.. The grants enable education professionals to put their ideas for educational innovation into practice.