{"id":33769,"date":"2018-07-31T13:44:43","date_gmt":"2018-07-31T19:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=33769"},"modified":"2020-03-05T10:14:19","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T17:14:19","slug":"faculty-profile-tom-duening-strives-to-create-value-for-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=33769","title":{"rendered":"Faculty profile: Tom Duening strives to create value for others"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tom Duening credits his mentors for sparking his passion for entrepreneurship during graduate school. Now, he\u2019s paying it forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t something I knew that much about \u2013 I never studied entrepreneurship in school and I didn\u2019t have any entrepreneurs in my family,\u201d Duening said. \u201cI was fortunate to encounter some mentors that guided me into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been an entrepreneur since 1984. Since then, he’s launched nine other companies and helped numerous others throughout the years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Duening joined UCCS in 2009 as the El Pomar Chair for Business & Entrepreneurship, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, and associate professor of management.<\/p>\n

Since then, Duening has helped establish a minor in entrepreneurship, created TEDxUCCS, Lion\u2019s Den Pitch Night, The Garage at UCCS and more.<\/p>\n

The Garage at UCCS provides students with a space to build and protect their intellectual ventures, pitch progress on their companies, and receive mentoring from faculty members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most rewarding part is consulting with students and local entrepreneurs to help guide them through entrepreneurship,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m available as their free consultant for as long as I\u2019m breathing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his research, Duening has developed the five virtues of entrepreneurship: create value for other people, respect the judgement of the marketplace, honor your contracts, be resilient, and be resourceful.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you practice those virtues every single day \u2013 you just are an entrepreneur. Eventually you\u2019ll stumble on some kind of an idea that can be built into a venture \u2013 you don\u2019t know when, how, where or why, it just happens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In his undergraduate classes, he challenges his students to practice the five virtues of entrepreneurship for 15 weeks, then write a paper about their experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really rewarding to see students who weren\u2019t sure what entrepreneurship was about realize they can start their own ventures too,\u201d Duening said.<\/p>\n

Duening received his bachelor\u2019s degree in natural sciences at University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, master\u2019s in philosophy of science and doctorate\u2019s in higher education administration at the University of Minnesota.<\/p>\n

\u201cOftentimes, people say that entrepreneurship is too risky. The thing is, to me, rock climbing\u2019s risky \u2013 but to the person who knows how to do it, it\u2019s not risky,\u201d Duening said. \u201cIt\u2019s the same with entrepreneurship \u2013 once you understand how to do it, it\u2019s not risky. Where you see risk, I see how to take that risk out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou discover sides of yourself you didn\u2019t know you had. Most human beings sub optimize their potential, but until you\u2019re facing the unknown, you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re capable of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duening urges his students to be the entrepreneur they can be, not the entrepreneur somebody else is. He advises them to follow their talent to be competitive and strives to extract that talent to help expose their great ideas.<\/p>\n

Duening provides insights on education, economics and entrepreneurship on his blog<\/a>, and is available to help others on their entrepreneurship endeavors: tduening@uccs.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Duening credits his mentors for sparking his passion for entrepreneurship during graduate school. Now, he\u2019s paying it forward. (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":33776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,46,9],"tags":[53,40],"class_list":["post-33769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","category-business","category-personnel","tag-academic-affairs","tag-college-of-business"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Tom-Duening-Comm.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-8MF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33769"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120105,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33769\/revisions\/120105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}