Located in the newly transformed Bata Library, Trent’s Entrepreneurship & Social Innovation Centre (ESIC) helps students turn their ideas into new enterprises. The Centre’s proximity to the Library’s Public Ideation Area, the MakerSpace, and research centres make it an ideal place for students and other entrepreneurs to meet and interact with mentors and prospective collaborators as well as allow faculty and partners to develop skills that promote research and innovation. Anchored in a desire to inspire and support student entrepreneurs and change agents, the new centre aims to help students address some of the most pressing socio-economic needs of our region.

“The Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation Centre is focused on enriching student credentials by helping each student build their specific set of soft skills,” explains John Knight, manager of corporate research at Trent. “Our core information and training program is around entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills. Entrepreneurial skills are valuable for any career.”

As a gathering place for Trent students, the ESIC will work to connect as many students and recent alumni as possible to extracurricular programming that teaches social and commercial innovation and entrepreneurship. It will facilitate impromptu exposure to entrepreneurism for students across all disciplines with events and cross-department programming. The Centre will help innovators at Trent commercialize their ideas.

Benefits of the Entrepreneurship & Social Innovation Centre, include:

• Support for students and others who wish to develop the skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur and change agent
• Promotion of entrepreneurship as a career
• Collaboration among students, faculty, and community members
• Access to extracurricular activities that build leadership, organization, and communication skills
• The leverage and growth of existing networks of investors, alumni, mentors and other community assets
• A safe, open space for brainstorming and idea refinement for groups of student entrepreneurs

Learn more about the ESIC.