The College of Natural Sciences Entrepreneurial Society hopes to help students create their own professional destiny.
The officers of the society. From left: Will Marsh, Taylor Barnett, Keerthana Kumar, and Alex MaingotFor the founders of the new College of Natural Sciences Entrepreneurial Society, the goal is to help their fellow students see that college isn’t just about seizing opportunities for the future. It can be about making them too.
“You can create your own job,” said Alex Maingot, president of the society. “You can create your own destiny. It’s not necessarily about starting your own company. It’s about the entrepreneurship within yourself, and that is the difference between the people who take opportunities and the people who make opportunities.”
Maingot is a first year sophomore studying computer science and business foundations. He has started his own business, eSync solutions, which is a web design, web hosting and business solutions service.
The society began last semester after Maingot and some fellow students attended “Mining the Human Mind: Entrepreneurship and the Knowledge Society,” a lecture by by Dr. Skip Porter. They approached Porter, the college’s Associate Dean for Innovation & Science Enterprise, and expressed interest in helping to spread entrepreneurship in the College of Natural Sciences. After some discussion, the organization was officially started and officers were elected this semester.
“Dr. Porter was very influential in starting the society and is still helping a lot as our faculty adviser,” Maingot said. “This society is very significant because it is the first society of its kind in the College of Natural Sciences. What the society is here to say is that professional school is not the only option, research is not the only option.”
Porter has great hopes for the organization.
“My hope for the society is that it creates an out-of-classroom, organized platform for students interested in knowing how you create a job, rather than just trying to find one,” Porter said. “The organization can invite speakers and set up forums. We are just trying to create a culture inside the college that it hasn’t had before, one in which students are connecting to society and learning about the value and importance of that.”
He added that even students who may not be entrepreneurs themselves can still benefit from the society because they will be more productive knowing how their job was created. Another goal of the society is to increase collaboration between different colleges inside the university. Porter said he is currently working with his colleagues in the Cockrell School of Engineering and the McCombs School of Business.
The Society will be hosting the first College of Natural Sciences Entrepreneurial Forum on Thursday, April 12. The forum will conclude with a keynote lecture by John Paul DeJoria, co-founder of, among other businesses, Paul Mitchell and the Patrón Spirits Company.
“I think all students in the college should be interested in this society and the upcoming forum,” Maingot said. “The vast majority of working people say they are doing something completely different than they first envisioned. Our paths will change even more rapidly than before. We need to start thinking more entrepreneurially — and that applies to everyone in the college.”
The other officers for the society include Vice President Taylor Barnett, Secretary Keerthana Kumar and Treasurer Will Marsh.
“Right now our journey is to be continued,” Maingot added. “We are a startup as well. We have a plan and know our product. Our product is enlightenment in the process of creating opportunities and trying to find new ways to spread that joy.”
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