David Newton, Westmont professor of entrepreneurial finance, will be honored by the Freedoms Foundation of Valley Forge in March. Newton will receive one of the 31st Annual Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Awards for Excellence in Private Enterprise Education.

Each year the foundation recognizes about a half-dozen individuals and/or programs that make extraordinary contributions to promoting American private enterprise on a regional or national level. Newton was the only winner in the college and university category this year.

Newton was nominated three previous times for the award: in 1993 for launching Westmont’s entrepreneurship program; in 1996 for developing the five-year research project, “The Westmont Small Business Barometer”; and in 1999 for the three-year student-faculty project promoting research about change and innovation in American industries, highlighted in his two-year run as contributing editor on growth capital for Industry Week Growing Companies magazine in New York.

The 2007 nomination focused on Newton’s five-year track record as founder and director of the Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (S.E.E.D.) National Collegiate Venture Forum. Launched in 2003, SEED’s initial forum in Santa Barbara in 2004 attracted 20 investor groups to review business plans from schools such as Columbia Business School, Louisville, Wake Forest and the Universities of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Iowa. The forum now attracts more than 40 investor groups and the SEED honor roll includes ventures from Boston University, Duke, John Carroll, Johns-Hopkins, Rice, Syracuse, Washington State, Westmont and the Universities of Akron, Maryland, Texas, San Francisco and Virginia.

The fifth annual forum, March 14-15 at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, will include ventures from Belmont, Emory, Harvard, Union (N.Y.), Westmont and the Universities of Central Oklahoma, San Francisco and Wisconsin-Madison.

Scott Craig is Westmont College‘s medial relations manager.