Eric Crawley Sets High Bar for Entrepreneurs in Residence at the College of Engineering
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As the College of Engineering’s (CoE) first Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) from 2016 to 2022, Eric Crawley once summarized his job description in eight words: “I help people turn crazy ideas into companies.” And that’s exactly what he has done in many capacities since 2016; helping students and others turn “crazy” but creative and useful ideas into booming startup companies.
How so? Crawley taught the college’s Engineering Leadership and Innovation class. He served as a guest lecturer in Chemical Engineering Department classes. Crawley worked as a volunteer on many campus innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) initiatives. He served as a National Science Foundation I-Corps instructor to support students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, and staff teams aiming to transfer technology discoveries into products and services. And he volunteered as an expert judge for the UMass Tech Challenge, a competition in which students pitch their technologically innovative ideas for prize money.
As Crawley readily explains about his specialty in the CoE, “Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Even those who fit the bill need a lot of support. Nobody starts a company by [himself or herself]. Networking is a big key. They come to me to find out if entrepreneurship is something they really want to do and how to determine if their ideas are worthwhile.”
Crawley is still busily engaged in several of the activities described above, but he stepped down as the CoE’s EiR in 2022. However, the program was recently revived in the College of Engineering, which describes it this way: “The EiR program provides mentoring and support for our engineering-community innovators. These successful alumni volunteers bring experience and expertise in multiple focus areas—and are passionate entrepreneurs with a strong history of commitment to the UMass Amherst I&E ecosystem.”
And Crawley has a great deal of experience in the I&E ecosystem.
Crawley holds a B.A. degree in Systems Science from Michigan State University and an M.S. in Engineering Management from UMass Amherst. That education launched him over the last three decades into jobs for Rockwell International, Wang Laboratories, Symbolics, Ford Motor Company, Wellfleet Communications, Bay Networks, Juniper Networks, Funk Software, BigBand Networks, and Akamai Technologies.
But his labor of love was always startups. In that context, Crawley started volunteering at the CoE in 2016. Beyond his duties as the EiR, as he recalls, “I also spoke to students in various classes about entrepreneurship, working in startups, and general career topics for engineers. I started teaching with ‘Startups for Engineers,’ a seminar to give students an idea of what it takes to create a startup and deliver products.”
Crawley says this seminar turned into a course for the Master of Science in Engineering Management (MSEM) program entitled “Engineering Leadership and Entrepreneurship” MIE 664, which was eventually adopted as part of the core curriculum in the college. “It was a fantastic experience,” he says, “developing and teaching a course for MSEM students. I received my M.S. in Engineering Management from UMass in the 1980s, and it was great to contribute to the program and help students become entrepreneurs and better leaders.”
As part of Crawley’s involvement at UMass, he was also a mentor in the I-Corps program. As he says, “The program helps move NSF-funded research from the lab to the marketplace by teaching entrepreneurial concepts and getting teams “out of the building” to find out the real problems that customers face. I have been an instructor for the I-Corps program at UMass, where we help them understand how to translate their research into products and services and prepare teams for the national program.”
Crawley will be a tough act to follow as the college’s inaugural EiR. (November 2023)