Newswise — Babson College Entrepreneurship Professor Heidi Neck has received the Schulze Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year Award (SEEYA). She is recognized as a trailblazer in American entrepreneurship education and stands out among her peers for a demonstrated ability to drive entrepreneurship education forward.

The SEEYA, presented by the Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange, annually honors college or university educators who have made a significant impact on entrepreneurship education through the development of effective and innovative programs, pedagogy, curriculum, exercises, simulations and activities. This award honors those who push the frontier of entrepreneurship in higher education and broadly disseminate best practices in the field.

“For those of us who are lucky enough to work closely with Heidi this recognition comes as no surprise," says Babson College Professor and Entrepreneurship Division Chair Andrew Corbett. "She is relentless about finding new and innovative ways to teach entrepreneurship; she seeks out new ideas for her classroom continuously. Additionally, over the past decade plus, she has developed into one of the world’s leading researchers on entrepreneurship pedagogy. It is this combination of excellence in practice and research inquisitiveness around entrepreneurship that make her a perfect honoree. And the rest of us – her colleagues and most importantly her students – are the beneficiaries of her dedication.”

About Babson College Entrepreneurship Professor Heidi Neck

Heidi Neck, Ph.D., is a Babson College Professor and the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies. She has taught entrepreneurship at the undergraduate, MBA and executive levels. Neck is the President of the United States Association of Small Business & Entrepreneurship (USASBE), an academic organization dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship education. She is Faculty Director of The Babson Collaborative, a global institutional membership organization for colleges and universities seeking to increase their capability and capacity in entrepreneurship education. Additionally, Neck is Faculty Director of Babson’s Symposia for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE) – a program designed to further develop faculty from around the world in the of art and craft of teaching entrepreneurship and building entrepreneurship programs. Through her leadership she has directly trained over 2,000 educators around the world. An award-winning teacher, Neck has been recognized for teaching excellence at Babson for undergraduate, graduate, and executive education. She has also been recognized by international organizations, the Academy of Management and USASBE, for excellence in pedagogy and course design.

Her research interests include entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurship inside organizations, and creative thinking. Neck is the lead author of Teaching Entrepreneurship: A Practice-Based Approach (Elgar Publishing) – a book written to help educators teach entrepreneurship in more experiential and engaging ways. Additionally, she has published 40+ book chapters, research monographs, and refereed articles in such journals as Journal of Small Business Management, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, and International Journal of Entrepreneurship Education. She is on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Learning & Education journal and is a Forbes blogger on entrepreneurship content.

Neck speaks and teaches internationally on cultivating the entrepreneurial mindset and espousing the positive force of entrepreneurship as a societal change agent. She consults and trains organizations of all sizes on building entrepreneurial capacity. She is the co-founder of VentureBlocks, an entrepreneurship education technology company and co-owner of FlowDog, a canine aquatic fitness and rehabilitation center located just outside of Boston. Heidi earned her Ph.D. in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She holds a B.S. in Marketing from Louisiana State University and an MBA from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

About EIX

Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange (EIX) is a social media learning platform with a goal to dramatically improve the success rate of new business ventures. EIX is dedicated to entrepreneurship students, professors and entrepreneurs. Funded by the Schulze Family Foundation, it is a free resource designed to advance and share the best research and practice of entrepreneurship, and make it relevant and accessible to both aspiring and practicing entrepreneurs.

About Babson College

Babson College is the educator, convener, and thought leader of Entrepreneurship of All Kinds® . The top-ranked college for entrepreneurship education, Babson is a dynamic living and learning laboratory where students, faculty, and staff work together to address the real-world problems of business and society. We prepare the entrepreneurial leaders our world needs most: those with strong functional knowledge and the skills and vision to navigate change, accommodate ambiguity, surmount complexity, and motivate teams in a common purpose to make a difference in the world, and have an impact on organizations of all sizes and types. As we have for nearly a half-century, Babson continues to advance Entrepreneurial Thought & Action ® as the most positive force on the planet for generating sustainable economic and social value. Visit www.babson.edu