Saint Louis University has a new leader at the helm of its entrepreneurship program.
Lewis Sheats has been hired as director of the Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship, which is part of the Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business. He began his new role Monday.
Sheats joins SLU from North Carolina State University, where he was assistant vice provost for entrepreneurship and executive director of the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic. He’s also an entrepreneur himself. He founded Interstate Logistics Inc. and was a founding member of GPS device firm Securus Inc. He’s also part-time chief strategy officer for Raleigh, North Carolina-based software firm Malartu Inc.
Sheats said he began his tenure in academia by happenstance, co-teaching a course in 2002 while on a hiatus from operating his company.
“I feel in love with being in the classroom,” Sheats said. “I really learned a lot about myself and learned I’m good at ideation, building solutions and products and launching companies. In the classroom, I could live that over and over again with the students.”
At SLU, Sheats said he wants to enhance the university’s entrepreneurship program, with plans to focus on interdisciplinary collaboration and experiential learning.
St. Louis Inno on Monday caught up with Sheats to discuss his new role and his plans for SLU’s Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What drew you to this new role at SLU? The people here are amazing, whether it be the faculty, students or the stakeholders in the ecosystem. They really impressed me in my visits here during the process of recruiting me. There’s a lot of people here that want our students and our ecosystem to be successful. That was a big driving factor for me. There’s so many great components off-campus and on-campus to build a world-class ecosystem and build upon the foundations that have been laid here over decades. That’s exciting. Thinking about my own life, I'm an entrepreneur at heart and I see an opportunity to build that next-level entrepreneurship program at SLU with the pieces that already exist. That was really the catalyst for me to make the change and come here. I’m excited for a new adventure.
Where do you see opportunities to expand and improve SLU’s entrepreneurship program? There’s a lot of good things that already exist, but I think the opportunity to work across campus in different disciplines is going to be a big mandate for me. How do we get students in other disciplines working together? It's about getting them in the same room. At NC State, where they have a really strong engineering program and a decent-size business school, on the engineering side you’d see students that came up with really good widgets but didn’t know who to sell it to or what to do with it. On the other side, you’d see business students who recognized really good concepts, but didn’t know how to build the software or the widget. Because of that, those ideas typically just fade away. What I want to do is make sure those students meet each other at the right time at the right place so they can team up and develop strong campaigns that can go out, be successful and impact our bigger ecosystem here in St. Louis. In addition to that, it’s embedding SLU students in the ecosystem that St. Louis already has and making sure they are part of that.
What role do you want to play in St. Louis’ larger entrepreneurial ecosystem? There’s a lot of different ways, but one of the driving factors for me is student success. How do we ensure students have a pathway to join the companies that exist here now. We do a good job of developing talent and developing smart young people. We want to make sure they land in the right place. It might be a new venture, but it’s going to be rare that you have a student go launch a company at 22 years old. It’s really about how we make sure that students are being exposed to the people that are going to hire them or invest in them. That’s the role we’re going to continue to play. We’re going to develop this talent pipeline for our entrepreneur ecosystem in St. Louis so companies recognize there are students here — young entrepreneurs — that can come join your company and make an impact on day one. We’re going to teach them to think that way and put them out to be able to do that.
As he settles into his new role, Sheats said he hopes to meet with others in the St. Louis startup sector and engage with them in his efforts to strengthen the student experience at SLU.
“I've been teaching for 20 years and I feel like a kid that just showed up at kindergarten," Sheats said. "I’m starting fresh and new and I couldn’t have more energy right now. The canvas is there for me to be able to paint on and I’m ready."
