PROFILE: Matthews' Zeal For Entrepreneurship Leads To National Position

UC entrepreneurship education leader Charles H. Matthews has been elected president of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE).

The USASBE is the world's largest professional organization for entrepreneurship education, with nearly 1,000 members in the United States. USASBE is also the U.S. affiliate of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), with a network of over 2,000 members worldwide.

Matthews' was voted president-elect in 2003 and was installed as president during the 18th annual USASBE conference in Dallas in January. Over 550 participants attended the three-day conference, featuring over 100 workshops and paper presentations across ten professional divisions, including entrepreneurship education, technology entrepreneurship, women and minority entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship and the arts, small business, corporate entrepreneurship, international entrepreneurship, family business, and individual entrepreneurship.

Matthews is an internationally recognized scholar in the field of entrepreneurship and is the founding director of UC's Center for Entrepreneurship Education and Research. He has served as the director of the Small Business Institute in the College of Business since 1982. He is a pioneer in the field of experience-based education, facilitating over 500 field case consulting projects involving over 2,000 students working with companies and also non-profit organizations.

Matthews is a past-president and Fellow of the Small Business Institute Directors Association, and was recently elected a Fellow of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship - one of only a half-dozen scholars in the field to be so honored.

As the founder of the UC Center for Entrepreneurship Education and Research, Matthews has overseen the development and implementation of the annual UC MBA New Venture Business Plan Competition, the Cecil Boatright Business Plan Competition (for the best field consulting case), the Bearcat Bridge Fund (providing seed grants to student venture start-ups), the Bearcat Launch Pad (incubator space in cooperation with CMC Properties to provide offices for both student and faculty new ventures), and the Annual Entrepreneurship Recognition Banquet.

A major thrust of the E-Center is to foster and facilitate entrepreneurship across the campus. UC's entrepreneurship program was ranked among the top 50 programs of its kind in 2001 by Success magazine, and in the top ten among all regional-level programs this year by Entrepreneurship magazine.