"The I&E Certificate has helped me better understand the iterative process of innovation and the steps I can take in my career to advance solutions to the issues about which I am most passionate."
- Matthew Martin MA '22 (Bioethics)
Make the Most of Your Duke Experience
Through this experiential Certificate program, aspiring innovators, entrepreneurs, and founders from across Duke’s graduate and professional programs can enhance their primary course of study.
Shape Your Future
Complement your area of study and gain skills to support your future career, whether you’re interested in starting a company, commercializing a technology, managing a lab, owning a practice, or simply standing out in an industry job.
Get All Duke Has to Offer
Interdisciplinary courses let you benefit from diverse teammates’ and faculty’s backgrounds in engineering, business, medicine, and beyond. As both a top-tier research institution and a premiere liberal arts school, Duke has resources for any project.
Make an Impact
In experiential, collaborative courses, you’ll develop innovative solutions based on your chosen fields of study or areas of interest and then turn those innovations into actionable ideas that impact society.
What’s Involved?
To complete the certificate, students take three courses plus a 1 credit seminar by the time they graduate from their primary degree program.
Discover, Develop & Deliver Solutions
Two elective courses
Develop your entrepreneurial mindset and gain experience with entrepreneurial action—discovering opportunities, developing solutions, and delivering them to the world.
Build Your Business Foundation
I&E 800: Business and Organizational Fundamentals for Entrepreneurial Action
Learn the essentials of organizational structures, leadership, accounting, and finance.
Tell Your Story
I&E 745: Narrative Design Seminar
Develop your communication and presentation skills to make the best case for yourself and your ideas across audiences.
Eligibility
The Certificate is open to all graduate and professional students enrolled in a full time, in-person program at Duke University that allows elective courses. Students enrolled in online or hybrid programs are not eligible for the Certificate at this time.
The Certificate can be completed in one year, or over several years, and at no additional cost. Students must complete the certificate by the time they graduate from their primary academic program.
Application
Before applying, please be sure you understand the Certificate requirements and you have room in your schedule to complete the Certificate prior to graduating.
Applications are processed on a rolling basis during the following application periods:
- Fall Enrollment: April 12, 2024 – October 11, 2024
- Spring Enrollment: November 12, 2024 - March 23, 2025
Students must apply for the Certificate by the deadline that occurs in the term before the semester they plan to graduate. For example, if you plan to graduate in December, you must apply by the March deadline. If you plan to graduate in May, you must apply by the October deadline.
Once your application is processed, the Certificate will appear on your record in DukeHub and on your official Duke Graduate School transcript.
General inquiries – certificate-entrepreneurship@duke.edu
Please contact your primary academic coordinator to determine how the I&E Certificate can work with your degree program’s requirements.
Student Insights
Agastya Sharma
Program: Molecular Genetics and Microbiology PhD
Plans after Duke: To work at the interface between research institutions in academia and the biotechnology industry to make scientific innovations accessible to those who need them most.
“The I&E classes I’ve taken are nothing like my PhD classes—I&E is hands-on and a lot of project-based learning. I’m currently in New Ventures: Discovery with Aaron Dinin. Our second week in class when we still hadn’t really met anyone, he said we had one hour to get into a group, go anywhere on campus, and find people to pay you for a certain service. That’s one of the things you need to learn as an entrepreneur, how to fight and break your way up to the top,
and we learned that instantly.”
Jeffrey Allen
Program: Biology PhD
Plans after Duke: To work in the agricultural biotechnology industry.
“Interacting with people from different backgrounds is very valuable. It forced me to learn the important skill of translating complex science into market opportunities.”
Sinja Kueppers
Program: Classical Studies PhD
Plans after Duke: My pathway after Duke will be driven by what excites me and where I can make an impact.
“I was very excited that the certificate was open to students from all backgrounds and all fields of study and decided to enroll because I’m interested in questions of social equity and innovation and wanted to learn more about the fundamentals of business and open design
thinking.”