Georgia Southern College’s Enterprise Innovation Group (BIG) has employed Patrick Woock, Ph.D., to guide its efforts in supporting south Georgia entrepreneurs because the unit’s new director of enterprise incubation.
On this newly created place, Woock will likely be liable for persevering with to develop the footprint that Georgia Southern has already established within the state’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. He’ll work within the southeast area by way of BIG’s Innovation Incubators (I2) and across the state by way of the Georgia Enterprise Community for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GENIE) program.
“As somebody who has labored in business and in academia, Patrick is the right particular person to assist take our incubator to the subsequent stage,” mentioned Dominique Halaby, DPA, affiliate provost for Innovation at Georgia Southern College.
Woock involves Georgia Southern with greater than 20 years of expertise in main entrepreneurs. He beforehand served because the director of the Small Enterprise Administration’s (SBA) SCORE Enterprise Mentors program in Duluth, Minnesota, and the director of the McNair Heart for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise on the College of St. Thomas in Texas. Moreover, he brings intensive worldwide experience with 14 years of Asian enterprise growth expertise.
“I’m excited to hitch the BIG staff, and I’m wanting ahead to implementing an impactful imaginative and prescient that can carry sustainable alternatives for south Georgia’s entrepreneurs,” Woock mentioned.
Within the position, Woock will even oversee the operations of the FabLab, the Enterprise Accelerator Program and the Digital Incubator Program.
As a unit, BIG works to construct an ecosystem all through the state of Georgia to assist entrepreneurs create, incubate and speed up their for-profit enterprise enterprises. In October 2022, the efforts of BIG and its useful resource companions culminated in Georgia Southern College being chosen as one in all 51 nationwide grant recipients of the U.S. Financial Improvement Administration’s (EDA) Construct to Scale program, whereby the College acquired $600,000 in grant funding together with $600,000 in native match funds. This was adopted by the awarding of a $794,472 EDA grant to scale up the GENIE program, which can join companies in 27 underserved places all through Georgia with the technical help they have to be profitable.
With incubators already established in Statesboro and Metter, and a 3rd quickly to open in Hinesville, BIG is dedicated to creating and deploying new technological platforms, progressive packages, high quality providers and academic occasions to assist meet the wants of space companies, entrepreneurs and innovators searching for to broaden enterprise operations or launch new enterprise enterprises, services and products.
About Georgia Southern College
Georgia Southern College, a public Carnegie Doctoral/R2 establishment based in 1906, affords roughly 140 completely different diploma packages serving almost 26,000 college students by way of 10 schools on three campuses in Statesboro, Savannah, Hinesville, and on-line instruction. A frontrunner in larger schooling in southeast Georgia with skilled college, the College is concentrated on public affect analysis and interesting in studying alternatives by way of the data and know-how that put together our college students to take possession of their lives, careers, and communities. Go to GeorgiaSouthern.edu.
