It’s summer break at Macalester College, but Kate Reiling can’t stop thinking about the library.
While students are away for the next few months, the second floor of Macalester’s DeWitt Wallace Library is scheduled to undergo a massive renovation. By the time they return in the fall, an area that once housed shelves of books will be a coworking and maker space equipped with everything from looms and sewing machines to computers and 3D printers.
Reiling heads the college’s growing entrepreneurship program, a collection of student artists, scientists, coders and other creative thinkers that will likely occupy the space once it is completed.
And as for the exact purpose of the new second floor?
“That’s something we’re trying to figure out ourselves,” Reiling said. “But I think it’s important that we don’t answer that for the students. We’ll give them the materials, but it’s up to them to determine how they will be used. It’s something I’m excited for them to experience.”
After becoming Macalester’s entrepreneur in residence two years ago, Reiling has worked with students and school administrators to expand the entrepreneurship program’s presence by adding and maintaining the college’s hackathons, incubators and seed funds.
“I always say that I’m a gardener,” Reiling explained. “There were a lot of things that had been planted, but needed some help to grow. I was invited to tend this garden and help the things that needed a little more fertilizer and sunshine.”
Much of Reiling’s work as entrepreneur in residence has been expanding the college’s existing programs. This includes the its accelerator, MacStartups, and seed fund, Live It Dream It. But she’s made several changes.
In addition to Macathon, the school’s 24-hour spring hackathon, Reiling added Funkathon, an overnight creativity competition for musicians and composers. In each, winners receive cash prizes. Some students continue to develop their ideas through summer internships or accelerators through the school.
MacNest is another new addition. Through MacNest students receive funding from Macalester for an unpaid internship at a Twin Cities startup. This summer’s inaugural group consists of 13 people. Each will receive a $4,500 stipend and spend the summer living rent-free in a house on Macalester’s campus.
“I don’t think we’ve changed a lot. So much of this has just been about adding an incredible amount of momentum,” Reiling said.
After she graduated from Macalester in 2000, Reiling spent nearly a decade working in the nonprofit community before founding her own company, Morphology Games, in 2009. Reiling said that when she was a student, Macalester didn’t have any “clear” entrepreneurship programs in place, even though the interest was there.
“When I think of entrepreneurship, I think of a mindset,” she said. “It’s all about looking at problems and finding ways to solve them. That’s always been there.”
Reiling added that today, many of the current programs exist simply because students started asking for them.
To some, a liberal arts college with no business school may seem like an odd place for a burgeoning entrepreneurship program. Reiling rejects this notion.
“Business students aren’t the only people for whom this works,” Reiling said. “Artists are some of the most entrepreneurial people on campus. Scientists too. They’re taught to break rules to come up with new things. That’s why culturally it makes sense here.”
She added that of the 150 students that participated in Macathon and Funkathon this spring, more than 30 percent were from the humanities. Reiling said she hopes that students feel they can participate in the entrepreneurship program regardless of what they’re studying.
“Eventually, I would love for us to be able to say that any student who has an idea, or wants to just imagine what it’s like to work on an idea, has the opportunity to do that,” she said.
