The Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management has been awarded a $330,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration to support more services for veterans.

The funding will support the newly established Veterans Business Outreach Center, which will help assist service members transitioning into careers involving small business, said Terry Brown, executive director of the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship at Whitman, in an email. The $330,000 grant is for the first year of the program.

Maria Contreras-Sweet, head of the SBA, announced SU and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families as the recipient of the grant at a press conference on Tuesday, but the amount of the grant wasn’t specified at the press conference.

A portion of the funding will be used to cover costs of the Boots to Business, which the IVMF and SBA are partners in. The work done in collaboration between the SBA and the IVMF has trained about 25,000 transitioning service members, Contreras-Sweet said at the press conference Tuesday.

Both Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) released statements in support of the grant.

“I fought to get the Veterans Business Outreach Center this federal funding so that central New York veteran entrepreneurs can get the assistance and guidance they need,” Gillibrand said in a statement.

Katko said the grant will further solidify SU as a leader in veteran’s higher education and post-service outreach.

“We owe it to our veterans to provide quality education opportunities — and with our rich history of service to veterans and burgeoning entrepreneurial culture, central New York is the ideal location for this program,” Katko said.

SU was one of many universities, private organizations, nonprofits and government agencies that applied for the grant, according to an SU News release.

Brown, the executive director of the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship, said the VBOC would be open to all veterans, not just students at SU.

“We believed that our capabilities were as strong as any organization’s in the country and our deep entrepreneurial bench could be extended to our veterans,” Brown said. “We have and will continue to have great pride in helping those who have sacrificed so much for us.”

Published on April 22, 2015 at 10:32 pm

Contact Rachel: rsandler@syr.edu