Frank Hoy, Paul R. Beswick Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, came to WPI’s School of Business five years ago, and hasn’t looked back. What he is doing, though, is looking ahead—personally supporting fundraising for the institute’s Collaborative for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, of which he is director; for the Art Gerstenfeld Endowed Fund for the WPI Wall Street Project Center; for students in the financial arena; and for the Alumni Gym repurposing project, in which the School of Business will have a space.
Hoy would like to see more of his fellow School of Business faculty and staff members contribute to campus fundraising efforts, whichever ones they feel strongly about. He’s issued a fundraising challenge that calls on colleagues to contribute cash and show they back the school where they work.
“If we want these donors to provide us support,” Hoy says, “we need to make a statement to support the university: show that we are willing … to make the university better. We ourselves can have a broader impact on society,” Hoy says of faculty members.
PRIDE, PERSPECTIVE
Having earned his BBA, MBA, and PhD in Texas, spending 10 years as a faculty member at the University of Georgia and 18 years at the University of Texas at El Paso, and embarking upon extensive travel both stateside and overseas, Hoy has developed a broad perspective with which to evaluate WPI. “I’ve never been at a school like WPI,” he says. “What’s going on here is just remarkable.”
Hoy lists some of his findings on WPI in his profile on WPI’s website. In addition to his approval of the school’s multidisciplinary approach across fields, “the environment here is vigorous and challenging,” he says. “Students expect to work hard and to be exposed to new ideas. The emphasis on project-based learning is a marvelous fit with the entrepreneurial mindset.”
