Wabash College and the University of Notre Dame have entered into a partnership creating postgraduate opportunities for Wabash students, as Notre Dame will reserve two seats annually in both the Engineering, Science, and Technology Entrepreneurship Excellence Master's (ESTEEM) and Master of Science in Patent Law (MSPL) programs.
"Wabash is very pleased to be partnering with Notre Dame on these exciting new master’s degree programs for our students,” said Wabash President Gregory D. Hess. “It has been a goal of our Center for Business, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship to develop partnerships that expand opportunities for Wabash men to demonstrate their critical thinking and problem solving skills, and we are proud to build this important connection with Notre Dame.”
The partnership is a result of the connections that the Wabash College Center for Innovation, Business & Entrepreneurship (CIBE) has established with the University of Notre Dame, embarking on a path to inspire and foster innovation and entrepreneurship among its students. As the CIBE continues its mission to provide students with real-world business skills and perspective, it became clear that students were looking for opportunities after graduating from Wabash to further their entrepreneurial spirit.
Wabash College is the first non-Catholic aligned college in the country to enter a partnership with the University of Notre Dame’s ESTEEM Program, and the first in the state of Indiana. Further, Wabash is the first college in the country to partner with the MSPL program.
Two Wabash Class of 2015 graduates already are a part of the current ESTEEM class that started in June. Both students started their entrepreneurial journey during the CIBE Summer LABB program, a seven-week summer experience that teaches students about business through the lens of entrepreneurship. The duo then were accepted into the CIBE Partner Program, a selective group that works on solving complex real-world business, marketing, or logistics issues for the College and broader community.
“Through the partnerships with Notre Dame, Wabash students are able to get the focused training they want to further their careers so that they can go from the research bench to the boardroom with ease,” said Roland Morin, director of the CIBE. “Being able to point Wabash students to these proven graduate programs allows students in the hard sciences or with strong analytical backgrounds new opportunities to use their critical thinking skills to enrich our community.”
ESTEEM, the first multi-disciplinary graduate program in the history of the University of Notre Dame (founded by the Colleges of Science, Engineering and Business), is an 11-month Entrepreneurship Master's Program that enables students to fully immerse themselves into the world of technology entrepreneurship. This graduate education experience provides students with the foundation of technical expertise and business knowledge necessary to master the modern marketplace and become a leading innovator among the world's most successful start-ups and corporations.
Notre Dame’s Master of Science in Patent Law Program (MSPL) is a graduate-level, one-year interdisciplinary experience that brings together the College of Engineering, College of Science, and Law School. By relating the technologies relevant in today’s innovation-based marketplace to the patent legal concepts that protect them, the program prepares individuals to pass the Patent Bar and practice patent law.