Sarah Goforth is the executive director of the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Arkansas. She teaches the graduate level New Venture Development course sequence and oversees the interdisciplinary Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship.
Goforth thinks of the Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship Program as a low-risk incubator. The program pairs MBA and other business graduate students on interdisciplinary teams with graduate students from STEM and other disciplines.
“As most successful entrepreneurs know, part of the power of a successful team of founders is in their diversity – of their background, of their gender and ethnicity, of their skills, and of their disciplines,” Goforth says. The Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship program serves to simulate this in its classes, as Goforth encourages students to work with those outside their degree programs.
The goal of the program is to help graduate students learn how to evaluate new opportunities and to develop business models, while reducing the likelihood of failure. Goforth says one of the main benefits of the program is developing skills that can only be built by doing and learning through experience.
She says the program is fortunate to have a great community of supporters and mentors. “These are experienced entrepreneurs and investors from all over the world, who care about our students and who bring expertise and questions and opportunities to the students,” Goforth says. Students leave the graduate entrepreneurship program with skills, relationships and a network of support that could help them launch their next venture. Goforth’s hope for the students in her classes is that they gain the “confidence to test their own ideas.”
Before joining the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Arkansas, Goforth was chief communications officer for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, where she served on the executive leadership team and oversaw the museum’s marketing, digital media and public relations teams. She has also held senior roles at the Discovery Channel and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where she was part of a core team that established a new science documentary startup, Tangled Bank Studios.
Goforth holds a B.A. in biology from Hendrix College and an M.A. in science journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been published in The Journal of Neuroscience, The Scientist, Popular Science, Science, Discovery.com, Smithsonian magazine, Madison magazine, and The Dallas Morning News. Between 2001-2009, she owned and operated an independent science communications consultancy.
