Opinion: UNC entreprenurial community needs greater inclusion

CORRECTION: Due to a sourcing error, a previous version of this editorial misidentified an organization Reese News Lab reached out to in order to recruit staff. It was the Carolina Association of Black Journalists. The editorial has been updated to reflect this change.

Last Wednesday, Chancellor Carol Folt’s welcome-back message highlighted a leadership award UNC received from Deshpande, a foundation that promotes entrepreneurship across industries.

UNC has indeed succeeded in building opportunities for entrepreneurship and innovation. But racial, gender and economic gaps can still be found in our entrepreneurial populace.

In spring 2015, the University hosted more than 10,000 minority students, and women outnumbered men on this campus by nearly 4,000.

Yet, in attending any given Pitch Party or entrepreneurs’ club meeting, you would be lucky to find tan or brown skin, let alone enough students to reflect the 30 percent on campus who are members of minority groups. The entrepreneurial demographic seems to skew toward white males and those from wealthier backgrounds.

The University has many individuals who produce innovative solutions daily — enough so that the Chancellor’s Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship even said on its website that the campus community can change the world.

Yet, some students are not represented.

Therefore, the leaders of the entrepreneurial community on campus should seek to partner with the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs to brainstorm new avenues of better engaging the community’s missing players in the entrepreneurial world.

And while entrepreneurial bubbles exist all over campus, it’s still difficult to find spaces where different disciplines intersect.

Pushes for innovation have popped up in many places, from Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Carolina Challenge to the School of Media and Journalism’s Reese News Lab. But when will we bring these diverse talents to the same table?

While all of these programs do a great job of creating and fostering new, innovative ideas, they are secluded to their own realms of academia and industry.

A few spaces on campus have made the leap to interdisciplinary entrepreneurial ideation. One is simply called UNC Ideation. The body hosts an annual “create-a-thon” where students from across campus spend a day solving one creativity challenge. But even this event is limited in ethnic diversity.

The Reese News Lab should be commended for improving the diversity of its applicant pool by directly engaging venues where students who are part of minority groups already congregate, such as the Carolina Association of Black Journalists.

Minority students can be reached, and many want to participate in the entrepreneurial world.

Further collaborative efforts need to be made to diversify the innovative thought culture on UNC’s campus.