Warrington College of Business Administration                                                                                                              FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

Office of Publications                                                                                                                                                                January 14, 2013 

Contact: Milenko Martinovich 

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milenko.martinovich@warrington.ufl.edu 

warrington.ufl.edu 

Warrington entrepreneurship program receives top national award 

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Thomas S. Johnson Master of Science in Entrepreneurship Program (MSE) at the Hough Graduate School of Business at the Warrington College of Business Administration received the 2013 United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) National Model Graduate Entrepreneurship Program award. 

In addition, Post Doctoral Associate Yongseok Jang received the USASBE Best Teaching Case award for his submission, “Expanding an Entrepreneurial Enterprise: Fracture, LLC.” 

“This is a tremendous validation of the efforts we’ve had in place for a number of years, and continues to highlight the incredible amount of successful entrepreneurial activity that exists here in Gainesville,” said Jamie Kraft, Executive Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. “The Gainesville ecosystem continues to evolve, which provides a tremendous playground for experiential learning opportunities for our students.” The USASBE presents three National Model Program awards (undergraduate, graduate and doctoral) annually. The awards are given to colleges and universities “that have developed and currently still offer high quality and innovative programs, the purpose of which is to educate and train future generations of entrepreneurs.” Programs are evaluated on innovation, quality, comprehensiveness, sustainability, transferability, depth of support and impact. Past winners have included Harvard University, Babson College, Indiana University, the University of North Carolina, Wake Forest, and the University of Texas. 

The MSE program was a finalist for the award in 2012. The MSE program has been recognized numerous times for its innovation and success and received the 2012 Excellence in Specialty Entrepreneurship Education award from the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC) in October 2012. The MSE program features some of the nation’s most innovative and interesting initiatives such as GatorNest, an eight-week program whereby students work with a startup organization to assist with the development of a new venture opportunity, the Integrated Technology Venture Program (ITV), a year-long program bringing together business, law and engineering students onto a multi-disciplinary project team tasked with the responsibility of developing a targeted technology commercialization plan and prototype, and the Lean Entrepreneurship Accelerator Program (LEAP), where students receive business advisement and gain access to early stage proof-of-concept funding and incubation space. The program has also been strengthened as the College’s Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation moved into new space in September 2011 with the addition of the Jeff Gold Experiential Learning Laboratory. 

The MSE program is named after Thomas S. Johnson (BSBA ’72). Mr. Johnson served as Director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Imaging Systems which he founded in 1994. Global Imaging Systems acquired 110 office imaging businesses and reached $1.3 billion in annual revenue. 

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The Warrington College of Business Administration is one of the world’s top-rated public business programs, recognized for excellence by U.S.News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, and Fortune. As part of a Research 1 institution, Warrington is dedicated to a substantial research agenda, in addition to its teaching mission, from the undergraduate to the doctoral level. Warrington educates future business leaders using teamwork that provides opportunities for development of leadership, interpersonal and total management skills; promoting mastery of business functional areas; and fostering the habits and attitudes that constitute a solid research and work ethic.