For the past several months, I have had the pleasure of interacting with some student leaders at the University of Texas who are keenly interested in both entrepreneurship, and the future of Austin. Derek Pavlicek and Royal Frasier are two in particular that I have met on several occassions, and they are both leaders in a student organization named Texas Ventures. When I first heard the name, it kind of surprised me because it sounds like a venture capital firm, but it isn’t. It’s a student organization created to foster entrepreneurship among UT students. Surely, the University of Texas has plenty of classes on entrepreneurship, you might be thinking. Well, yes and no. At the post-graduate level there is an MBA concentration in entrepreneurship, and I believe the business honors program also has an entrepreneurship focus. But that’s it. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of options for students in engineering, computer science, or even the life sciences.

Consequently, we’ve had a huge outflowing of talent that accept jobs at the tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo after graduating from UT. Mostly because they’ve  not been exposed to, and integrated into, the entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem in Austin. Texas Ventures is really working hard to bridge that gap between the university and the startup business community. One output of that effort is the upcoming Texas Entrepreneurial Summit.

The summit takes place over the course of three evenings here in Austin, from April 22-24th, 2009. They are planning for over 1,000 people to attend who are interested in entrepreneurship in Austin. They are also seeking sponsors, if your organization would be interested. Some of the keynote speakers for the event include Clayton Christopher, co-founder of Sweet Leaf Tea and Kirill Makharinsky, co-founder of YouNoodle.

Registration appears to be free, and it’s bound to be an interesting event.