Research professor continues work in
College of Education
MURFREESBORO — MTSU College of Education research professor
Wilburn (Wil) Clouse has been recognized for his decades of work promoting
entrepreneurship as recipient of this year’s John E. Hughes Award for
Entrepreneurial Advocacy from the U.S. Association of Small Business and
Entrepreneurship.
“For me this is the highest award
that I’ve ever received for my lifetime work in creativity, innovation and
entrepreneurship,” Clouse said.
Clouse, an MTSU alumnus (’68),
wants to sow the spirit of entrepreneurship within disciplines throughout the
MTSU campus through his current position as a research professor in the College
of Education’s Womack Educational Leadership Department.
“We are very pleased to have Wil
Clouse at MTSU, and his expertise and enthusiasm have helped to infuse
innovation, problem-based learning and entrepreneurship education across our
campus,” said Lana Seivers, dean of the MTSU College of Education.
MTSU associate education professor
Terry Goodin nominated Clouse for the Hughes Award, citing among other things
Clouse’s four-decade plus career at Vanderbilt University, where he developed
the Center for Entrepreneurship Education at Vanderbilt, before moving on to
Western Kentucky University, where he developed two centers of Excellence — the
Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Entrepreneurial Academy of
Excellence — and served as the first executive director before leaving in 2013.
“He has an entrepreneurship spirit
that permeates his life as a teacher, researcher, consultant and independent
entrepreneur,” Goodin wrote in his award nomination letter. “In his work at
four different universities over the past 54 years, Wil has had the opportunity
to spread the entrepreneurship spirit to some 10,000 students.”
The Hughes Award is one of three
awards given by the U.S. Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
These three awards provide USASBE’s highest recognition to individuals “who
have demonstrated clearly a significant leadership role in promoting
entrepreneurship through their work and contributions to the field,” according
to www.usasbe.org. The awards were presented Jan. 23 at USASBE’s annual meeting
in Tampa, Florida.
Among Clouse’s professional
achievements, he has held the Mattie Newman Ford Endowed Chair in
Entrepreneurship at WKU; serves as a professor emeritus at Vanderbilt; founded
and served as president for three entrepreneurial ventures: Clouse and
Associates (1975), Matrix Systems Inc. (1981) and the Clouse–Elrod Foundation
Inc. (2011).
Before all of that, he purchased
his first IPO at age 14.
“I’ve always been an outside of
the box thinker,” Clouse said from his office on the third floor of the MTSU
College of Education Building. “I’ve always been into creativity, innovation
and entrepreneurship, but never really recognized it in the early days of my
life.”
Clouse grew up in Nashville and
attended public schools there, showing a penchant for business at an early age.
He said he bought that first IPO as a teenager for $100 — a hefty chunk of cash
in the 1950s for a teen — as an investment in a new insurance company startup.
He recalls as a youngster a storm
hitting his neighborhood, downing trees in the yards of some homes. So he went
from door to door asking homeowners if they’d like him to remove the fallen
trees and limbs for a fee. While some neighbors questioned whether a youngster
of his size could handle such a job, he assured them he could before bringing
on his dad as a subcontractor to do the work.
“When I came up you had to hustle
to live,” Clouse said. “When I’d see new opportunities in the neighborhood, I’d
contract with people to do (the jobs).”
Clouse’s first job out of college
was as a research assistant in the Department of Biochemistry in the School of
Medicine at Vanderbilt University. He did that a few years before moving to a
chemical engineering position with the DuPont Company and was a patent
coordinator at one point.
To complement his technical expertise
(he already had a bachelor’s degree in chemistry) with some business acumen,
Clouse began taking night/weekend classes in economics at MTSU. While there,
Dr. Furman Cunningham, then dean of the MTSU College of Business, asked Clouse
if he’d like to teach some economics courses. While at first hesitant, he gave
it a shot and found his place in academia.
He would later go on to develop
the first computer science technology program as one of the founding faculty at
Columbia State Community College, and thereafter moved his work in technology
to Vanderbilt, where he earlier earned his doctorate in educational
administration.
Clouse had a number of creative
assignments at Vanderbilt, including the last 20 years working in innovation
and entrepreneurship education. While there, he developed a working
relationship with Hughes Award namesake John Hughes, who agreed to fund
Clouse’s entrepreneurship efforts at Vanderbilt through the Coleman Foundation
grants.
Clouse would go on to create his
own foundation, the Clouse-Elrod Foundation Inc., which has funded projects at
MTSU in agribusiness and education. He is currently working on a research paper
about the challenges facing all educators in teaching the millennial generation
and properly preparing to be productive in the marketplace. Clouse believes
traditional methods of teaching must evolve to engage millennials more deeply
and to be centered on authentic problem-based learning.
“Dr. Clouse brings years of
valuable experience in higher education to our department and is helping us
become a leader throughout the state in ‘problem-based learning,’” said Dr. Jim
Huffman, chair of MTSU’s Womack Educational Leadership Department.
Clouse’s focus is on
cross-disciplinary entrepreneurship and innovation, and he is currently work
with Dr. Andrienne Friedli, professor of chemistry and assistant vice president
for research; Dr. Charles Perry, professor of engineering technology and the
Russell Chair of Manufacturing Excellence; Dr. Bill McDowell, Wright Travel Chair
of Entrepreneurship; Dr. Warren Gill, director of the School of Agribusiness
and Agriscience; and other faculty members to help develop a culture of
innovation and commercialization across all disciplines at MTSU.
McDowell was in Tampa when Clouse
received the award and looks forward to working with him more closely on the
MTSU campus.
“Dr. Clouse is an excellent mentor
and friend, and he continues to pour himself into developing entrepreneurs,”
McDowell said. “Currently, he is working with me on the Wright Travel Chair of
Entrepreneurship Business Plan Competition by serving as a judge and a
coach/mentor to some of the competition finalists. In addition, through
the Clouse-Elrod foundation, he will be funding some individual level awards
for the best plan in certain functional areas.”
“I’d like to be able to infuse
innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship across the entire MTSU campus,”
Clouse said, adding that he’s working to develop problem-based modules that
encourage creative and innovative thinking by students. “So that when a student
learns the academics of that class, he or she will see the opportunities to
take that idea from that class into the marketplace.”
For more information about the
MTSU College of Education’s Womack Educational Leadership Department, visit http://mtsu.edu/edu_leadership/.
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