From Startup to Scale

This story was written by Natalie Kostelni, associate director of partnership communications in the Office of the Provost.

This story is part of a series on Drexel’s Academic Transformation — a sweeping initiative underway now through fall 2027 that is reimagining classes, calendars, curricula and core competencies to prepare graduates for the contemporary world of work.

Early in her career as a management professor, Donna De Carolis, PhD, observed that traditional business schools approached entrepreneurship primarily as a technical skill. But she saw it differently. 

"Entrepreneurship is more about the person,” said DeCarolis. “An entrepreneur is someone who is resilient, leads, is creative and innovative. I believe you can teach, develop and cultivate that mindset and character.” 

That conviction led her to launch what would become the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship in January 2013. Over the next decade, as its founding dean, she hired faculty, built curriculum and established a student business incubator — achieving consistent national rankings in both undergraduate and graduate programs along the way. 

Now, as Drexel pursues a three-year plan of Academic Transformation with a target completion of August 2027, the Close School is writing its next chapter by integrating with the Bennett S. LeBow College of Business. The process that Close School and LeBow College leaders undertook offers a blueprint for Academic Transformation in practice — how to combine academic strengths and expand student opportunity while preserving the identity and community that made each unit successful in the first place.  

The Strategic Imperative

A tenet of Academic Transformation is integrating separate but related academic units to create academic hubs that expose students to broader faculty expertise, resources and interdisciplinary opportunities. By stepping out of silos, students learn to approach challenges as complex problems requiring multiple perspectives and collaborative solutions. Across the campus, several other colleges and schools are also recombining into larger disciplinary clusters. 

For schools like Close, the strategy also reflects a broader reality across higher education: smaller academic units can find it difficult to sustain growth and expand opportunities for students without the support and scale of a larger academic community. 

"It's hard to be small in higher ed these days," said Chuck Sacco, vice dean at the Close School. "You need efficiencies to be cost-effective and to scale, all while still maintaining, as much as possible, the identity that made you successful. You have something really good, and sometimes it makes sense to integrate with something else.”  

For De Carolis, integration is a logical next step for the Close School. “This is the natural evolution of a startup,” she said. 

Leadership as Foundation 

Before the Close-LeBow integration could succeed structurally, it had to succeed relationally. That meant building upon years of professional connection between the schools' deans. 

"The relationship Donna and Vibhas have had over the years set the tone from the beginning and set the stage for doing what the University is asking us to do — improve how we operate for students," Sacco said of De Carolis and LeBow Dean Vibhas Madan. 

The foundation had to be laid deliberately and early, said Murugan Anandarajan, PhD., senior associate dean for graduate and external partnerships at LeBow College. "If there's one thing we knew was integral to managing this integration successfully, it's that foundations matter," he said. "You can't expect to integrate an established entity such as Close within LeBow, a larger entity, and not lay the groundwork early for a solid foundation. You won't see success without building community, keeping communication constant, and working with teams." 

The deans' relationship provided a model that cascaded through their leadership teams. Sacco and Anandarajan established their own regular communication cadence. They began speaking every Friday to check in and identify issues that needed attention. Once the call was over, they each got to work addressing them.  
This "one level below" partnership proved critical.  

While deans set strategic direction and institutional tone, senior associate deans operate in the implementation zone where policy becomes practice and competing priorities get resolved before they escalate. The weekly check-ins created a space where emerging challenges could be surfaced early and addressed collaboratively rather than traveling up separate chains of command to be resolved at the dean level. 

"One level below the deans is where you're actually getting things done," Sacco explained. "Open, supportive and communicative. The tone starts from the top, and having two strong leaders has been crucial, but so is having direct operational partners who can move quickly on the daily decisions that keep momentum going."

The People Side of the Equation 

As with any organizational change, the early conversations that began in November 2024 surfaced concerns and questions from faculty and staff. 

Strategic alignment came relatively quickly, but managing the human dimensions presented the greatest challenge. Organizations don't merge — people do. And people feel fear, uncertainty and loss when faced with change. 

"One of the things we always emphasized in the integration is that it lies on the back of the people," said Anandarajan. "People are naturally anxious and worried. It’s necessary to look at the person behind the desk and find ways to keep people informed and give them confidence they have a place in what’s being built." 

The approach required what Anandarajan calls "walking five miles in their shoes." Empathy wasn't optional but essential. This approach required candor and clear information on how this integration would be beneficial to each unit and the faculty and professional staff who have been stewards of each.  

The integration deliberately avoided digital-first communication for sensitive matters. For decisions affecting positions or roles, communication was in-person. "For something like this, you sit down with a person and look in their eyes and let them know, while unfortunately the process may not be perfect, it will be fair," Anandarajan said.  

LeBow College representatives made a point to meet at the Close School, a deliberate gesture of respect and partnership.  

The teams also created opportunities for natural collaboration before formal structures changed. In January 2024, the groups held joint meetings for their AACSB accreditation process, which were sessions that had previously been separate. This helped facilitate ideas and opportunities between the two.  

A critical element was bringing De Carolis into LeBow College's communications and marketing efforts early. "We needed to tell students what was happening, and the best way was to get Donna to address it," said Anandarajan. "She explained the history — how she started Close as a one-room shop in the management department and built it into a whole school. This is something she created with blood, sweat and tears." 

Leaders placed Close School faculty on LeBow College committees to build understanding of processes and culture. By summer 2025, the groups held a combined town hall followed by a social gathering.  

What happened next, at the social gathering, revealed how far they still had to go. 

"We saw Close people and LeBow people at separate tables and not mixing," said Anandarajan.  

The moment underscored that structural change can happen quickly, but cultural integration takes longer.

 

Tangible Results, Early Wins 

The integration is already delivering clear advantages — both strategically and in the day-to-day student experience — across Close and LeBow. 

"LeBow is getting a full-fledged school that has consistently ranked, undergraduate and graduate, nationally,” De Carolis said. “Along with the Baiada Institute, we bring a unique curriculum that develops the entrepreneurial mindset, resilience and experience together with business skills." 

At the center of that model is the Laurence A. Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurship, long a hub for students to harness and grow their ideas through mentoring, business competitions and connections to legal resources and seed funding.   

Some of the earliest gains have come through immediate operational changes. Integrating the schools’ websites, for example, demonstrated tangible benefits early on. A Baiada Institute suggestion form has attracted attention from students within LeBow College, expanding visibility and audiences for Close School programming and opening new engagement points for students in both units.  

Students will immediately benefit from expanded resources as part of the LeBow College community, including professional development support through the Career Readiness Center, access to business case competitions, networking events and more to grow from there. Close School will retain its BA in entrepreneurship, while LeBow College adds a BSBA option.  

More significantly, all LeBow College business majors will now take a required course in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking, a distinctive feature Madan sees as a competitive differentiator. 

"Having a school of entrepreneurship is a distinguishing feature for the College, and my hope is that as we move forward, we amplify the entrepreneurship program's reach," Madan said. 

The integration required operational adjustments that preserved Close's university-wide mission. One example: the Baiada Institute, housed within Close, will expand across Drexel as part of LeBow's Six-Six initiative — six strategic projects delivered over six months.

Looking Ahead 

With the administrative integration well underway, the next phase is focused on deeper curricular and strategic alignment, with full curriculum integration expected by August 2026. 

A key focus of that shift is expanding the reach of the Baiada Institute across campus. Its Impact Innovation Hub provides seed money and programming for social entrepreneurship, and the cross-campus impact is already visible. In the most recent funding round, students from biomedical engineering, engineering, computer science and nursing received support alongside a student from Close School. 

Madan sees particular opportunity in that growth. "A strategic priority for LeBow College is community impact and goals that align with our strategic priorities," he said. "Close School has a strong program in social entrepreneurship, and having Close as part of the LeBow community is going to increase our footprint in terms of societal impact." 

More broadly, the integration positions entrepreneurial thinking as a university-wide competency — extending beyond business students to young scholars across disciplines. "We have to think of our mission to scale entrepreneurship across the University,” said DeCarolis.

 

Lessons for Transformation 

As Drexel moves toward the completion of Academic Transformation, the Close-LeBow integration offers insights into making structural change and positioning teams on the road to success.  

Operational alignment requires dedicated infrastructure. Weekly Friday calls between Sacco and Anandarajan served as the operational engine of the integration, where daily decisions got made and friction surfaced before manifesting into an issue. 

Symbolic gestures telegraph intent. When LeBow College representatives chose to meet at the Close School, they sent a message about partnership and the gesture mattered. 

Culture lags structure. The separate tables at the social event revealed what organizational charts can't capture: people don't become a community just because you've merged their budgets and reporting lines. Cultural integration takes time.  

For Anandarajan, the integration reflects something distinctive about Drexel itself.  

"First as a student in 1992 and later as a faculty member, I've gotten to know Drexel like the back of my hand,” he said. “There is something here that is unquantifiable. It is the soul of Drexel. The question is whether we have the courage to build around it." 

The Close-LeBow integration suggests that when Drexel’s spirit of reinvention combines with strategic vision, careful planning and genuine attention to people, institutional transformation can succeed and create something more valuable than the sum of its parts. 

"This integration of Close School within the LeBow College of Business is going to drive greater experiential opportunities for students and collaboration among faculty, and foster engagement with the research community around us," Madan said. 

De Carolis sees the integration as exemplifying what Academic Transformation can achieve. "It really is a manifestation of interdisciplinary work where 2+2 equals more than four," she said. "Close School now has the opportunity to work more closely with the centers in LeBow, interact with other faculty and develop interdisciplinary programming." 

The startup that began as a one-room shop in a management department is scaling up and not by abandoning its identity, but by bringing its distinctive strengths into a larger community prepared to amplify them.