Lilly Endowment, Inc. provides $2.75M for internships

Two days after the Lilly Endowment, Inc. announced a $15 million donation to IU for a “brain incubator,” it revealed another contribution – this time for $2.75 million.

The gift will assist students with internships, as well as a collaboration between various schools and departments within the Bloomington campus and locations at IU East, IU Kokomo, IU Northwest, IU Southeast and IU South Bend.

“Hopefully, this will result in more of our students finding good jobs in Indiana,” said IU spokesman Larry MacIntyre. “If that’s the case, then it will have been money well spent.”

In 2003, the Lilly Endowment Inc. gave $5.5 million, “which was used to establish internship, service learning, job development and entrepreneurship programs,” according to an IU press release.

Donald F. Kuratko, executive director of the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and the Jack M. Gill Chair of entrepreneurship at the Kelley School of Business, said this year’s bequest will further the mission of the original donation.

“We started to put a number of these things into action the last couple of years, but the grant is going to enhance our ability to do that,” Kuratko said.

One of the missions of the endowment is to reverse the “brain drain,” in which students leave the Hoosier state after graduation, MacIntyre said.

“We certainly want to do everything we can to help the state of Indiana, as well as help individual students from Indiana,” MacIntyre said. “This gives us an opportunity to do both at the same time. That’s why we think it’s such a wonderful thing.”

The creation of the Bloomington Incubator, announced Tuesday, is part of IU’s new Innovate Indiana Initiative and will bring in new start-up companies involving technology and life sciences, according to an IU press release.

Kuratko said he hopes to offer students internships with the new incubator.

“We can help them subsidize what they can’t pay for in terms of paid internships,” he said. “It’s also going to help us create some experiential types of projects all across the campus to expose students more to the entrepreneurial perspective.”

Kuratko said the grant will not only help the Kelley School of Business, but also the Liberal Arts and Management Program, College of Arts & Sciences, School of Informatics, Jacobs School of Music, School of Public and Environmental Affairs and School of Medicine.

“Our big vision is to create the entrepreneurship campus of the 21st century,” Kuratko said.