Carl Schramm, one of the world’s leading experts on entrepreneurship, innovation and economic growth, is coming to teach at the University of California, Davis, Graduate School of Management, thanks to a recent gift from the Arthur & Carlyse Ciocca Charitable Foundation.

Schramm, former president and chief executive officer of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, is the inaugural holder of the Arthur and Carlyse Ciocca Visiting Professorship in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He will teach at the UC Davis management school this spring quarter, which begins March 28.

Named the “evangelist of entrepreneurship” by The Economist, Schramm is a serial entrepreneur who has played important roles in advancing entrepreneurial capitalism globally. He co-authored a new, best-selling book, “Better Capitalism: Renewing the Entrepreneurial Strength of the American Economy” (2012) with Robert Litan.

 “It is a great honor for me to accept the Ciocca professorship,” Schramm said. “Art Ciocca, through his support of UC Davis, is the model of what a successful entrepreneur does when he engages in giving back to the community.

“I was compelled to accept the offer because I admire Chancellor Linda Katehi’s leadership in the area of academic studies of entrepreneurship and I knew of the good work Professor Andrew Hargadon has done in the field of energy and innovation,” he added. “I knew, by coming to UC Davis, I would have colleagues working on interesting frontiers in entrepreneurship.”

Dean Steven C. Currall applauded Schramm’s appointment: “We are thrilled to welcome Carl to the Graduate School of Management community and to offer our students access to one of the world’s greatest minds in entrepreneurship and innovation. Having a professor like Carl as a member of our team is part of the reason The Economist has ranked our faculty among the best in the world for overall quality.

“We are also so thankful to the Ciocca foundation for its philanthropic investment in our school and university,” Currall added. “Its support will help position our students for great success in their business careers.”

Arthur Ciocca is founder of Livermore, Calif.-based The Wine Group Inc., which Ciocca led to become the world’s third-largest wine producer. He is also co-founder of the Ciocca Foundation, which made the $500,000 commitment to UC Davis to create the visiting professor endowment — a first for the management school. Ciocca said Schramm’s influence will help impact UC Davis’ ability to bring about change at a national and international level.

Ciocca said he and his wife, Carlyse, made the gift to UC Davis to bring leading entrepreneurial minds, like Schramm, to the university because they believe in the management school’s mission to be a global leader of innovative and entrepreneurial education.

“I think Dean Currall is a wonderful role model for education, leadership and entrepreneurship. He is best able to leverage this opportunity to benefit the school and call attention to the wonderful work that is being done at UC Davis,” Ciocca said. “I thought that my gift would go the furthest here.”

Ciocca, too, is excited about the choice of Schramm: “Carl is not just an ordinary professor. He’s somebody who’s been there, done it, taught it and lives it. He can bring real-world, practical experience to the classroom and in a way that is simple, understandable, practical and powerful for everyday use by students.”

Schramm co-founded Startup America Partnership in conjunction with the Obama administration, chaired the U.S. Department of Commerce’s panel on measuring American innovation during the Bush administration, and served as a consultant to several foreign governments. In 2005, he and Gordon Brown — then chancellor of the Exchequer and, later, prime minister of the United Kingdom — co-founded Global Entrepreneurship Week, which is now celebrated in 170 countries.

Under Schramm’s leadership, the Kauffman Foundation became a unique global resource devoted to advancing entrepreneurship through innovative programs, grantee partnerships, policy research and advocacy. Additionally, he implemented several programs designed to increase business formation among minority populations and advanced the foundation’s pioneering work to improve the transfer of intellectual property from universities to commercial application.

Additionally, Schramm has created or co-founded five companies, one of which provided the statistical standards used to measure creditworthiness for a large segment of the public sector bond market. He also started the nation’s first academic center to study health care costs — while a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University — and was an executive vice president at Fortis, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, where he devised the first college-to-career health insurance product.

Schramm was recently named a University Professor at Syracuse University and writes for the George W. Bush Institute’s “Bush Center Blog.” His column, “Messy Capitalism” appears in Forbes magazine.  His writing has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs magazine, City Journal magazine and the Harvard Business Review. He has appeared many times on television as a guest of the PBS “Charlie Rose” program; CNBC’s “Street Signs” program with Brian Sullivan, and “Squawk Box” program with Joe Kernen; and Fox Business’ “After the Bell” program with David Asman and Liz Claman, and “The Willis Report” program with Gerri Willis.

Learn more about Carl Schramm at: http://www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/schramm.

The commitment from the Arthur & Carlyse Ciocca Charitable Foundation is part of The Campaign for UC Davis, the university’s first comprehensive fundraising campaign that seeks to raise $1 billion from 100,000 donors by 2014.

About the Arthur & Carlyse Ciocca Charitable Foundation

San Francisco-based Arthur & Carlyse Ciocca Charitable Foundation is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to advancing education, entrepreneurship and economic freedom for promoting true wealth-creation, preserving liberty and human dignity, and improving the quality of life of the poor throughout the world.

About the UC Davis Graduate School of Management

Dedicated to preparing innovative leaders for global impact, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management is consistently ranked among the premier business schools in the United States and internationally. The school’s faculty members are globally renowned for their teaching excellence and research in advancing management thinking. With prime locations in Northern California’s economic hubs, the school provides a bold, innovative approach to management education to about 100 full-time MBA students at the UC Davis campus, 425 part-time MBA students in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area, and welcomed the charter class of Master of Professional Accountancy students last fall.