Metro East Sun

To enhance professional connections between faculty and students, and the regional metropolitan business community, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville recently launched a partnership with the T-REX Innovation Center in St. Louis.

 

The  university expects the collaboration to gear up this month, and will include motivating graduate students from the business and arts and sciences schools to take advantage of networking opportunities.

 

“The partnership will provide SIUE faculty, staff and students access to T-REX’s resources that support start-up companies, and the opportunity to network with potential investors and other entrepreneurs,” Jerry Weinberg, SIUE's associate provost and dean of the graduate school, said.

 

Weinberg also said SIUE’s creative output can more easily transition from the laboratory to the marketplace through the program. The T-REX venue serves startups with economically priced work space. Founded as a nonprofit by a consortium of local and regional civic and commercial groups, it serves over 180 firms from its location in a historic building on Washington Avenue.

 

“We are thrilled to include SIUE as one of our university partners,” Patricia Hagen, T-REX's president and executive director, said. “Strong relationships with our great universities in the region help to seed and grow the elements of the regional economy that are focused on innovation and offer great opportunities for both students and faculty to connect to other great minds in the region.”