A new appointment for a business professor will help her achieve her goal of fostering a greater entrepreneurial culture on campus.

“This will really help us pursue a number of new initiatives,” said Francine Schlosser, an associate professor in the Odette School of Business who was recently named to the UWindsor Golden Jubilee Professorship in Business. “It will allow us leverage the university’s commitment, so that we can purse more independent funding for entrepreneurial research and pedagogy.”

Sponsored jointly by the Odette and the Office of the Vice-President, Research, the two-year renewable professorship is funded through an endowment established by the E & G Odette and P & L Odette Charitable Foundations, and by the University’s research stimulus fund, as a part of its 50th anniversary celebrations.

Dr. Schlosser, a founding director of the Centre for Enterprise and Law, and director of research and interdisciplinary learning for Odette’s new Entrepreneurship Centre, will draw upon her expertise in auditing, logistics and business development in her study of career transition and employment relationships of aging workers, volunteers and entrepreneurs.

Her research agenda promotes interdisciplinary, experiential entrepreneurial learning, and she has a proven track record of success in attracting funding. She’s been honoured with numerous research and teaching awards, including the Canadian Council of Small Business and Entrepreneurship award for most innovative course in entrepreneurial education.

The appointment will give her “time to research, develop, and experiment with innovative and collaborative student learning experiences,” Schlosser said.

Odette dean Allan Conway said he is thrilled with Schlosser’s selection.

“Her work on entrepreneurship and human capacity-building and her connection with so many outside constituencies and with faculty members inside Odette and across the university are enormously important in pushing forward the Odette and university strategies generally, and their research strategies specifically,” Dr. Conway said.

A strong advocate for knowledge transfer and mobilization, Michael Siu, the University’s vice-president, research, said he’s delighted with the appointment.

“I’m confident that Dr. Schlosser will use this award to build bridges that facilitate the transfer of research findings between academia and industry and the mobilization of knowledge from academia to the community for the benefit of society,” Dr. Siu said.