Can the ability to take an idea and grow it into a new business — often referred to these days as “entrepreneurship” — be learned at a university?

Yes, says Dean Dennis Elbert of the College of Business and Public Administration, if the student has the requisite energy and creativity, and if the teaching goes beyond traditional classroom methods.
Entrepreneurship programs are popping up across the country, he notes, but UND’s was one of the first. That experience pays. The Princeton Review and Forbes.com this year ranked UND as 14th on a list of the best 25 in the country, ahead of such schools as Stanford and Boston University. The reason? UND’s emphasis on experiential learning, internships, mentoring, and other approaches connecting academic content to the real world.

ELBERT

Having UND’s nationally known Center for Innovation — and its two businessincubators — under the umbrella of the College also helps (see the article at left).

UND’s program is led by Endowed Chair Jeffrey Stamp, Ph.D., one of the nation’s pioneers and gurus in entrepreneurship education, and Craig Silvernagel, entrepreneurship director. Within the College, about 30 students are majoring in the discipline. Another 40 students are pursuing less extensive “tracks” in entrepreneurship studies leading to the equivalent of a minor for business students and the awarding of a certificate for students from other colleges.

An increasing number of students in fields ranging from engineering to philosophy also are taking entrepreneurship courses as electives, Elbert noted.

The entrepreneurship major, like all of UND’s AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accredited business programs, is rigorous, Elbert said. It requires completion of a 34-credit pre-business core in accounting, economics, information systems, math, political science, and communication; and then, upon admission to major status, another 21-credit selection of required courses in marketing, management, finance, economics, and accounting.

The entrepreneurship major itself includes nine required courses: Venture Initiation, Venture Growth, New Product Development, Entrepreneurial Finance, Personal Selling, Marketing Research I, Marketing Research II, Human Resource Management, and, perhaps most important, the Entrepreneurship Internship.

The whole process is tied together as each student develops a business plan, which gains definition as the student moves through the course work. In the end, the plan should have sufficient sophistication and substance to be financed and implemented.

The business plans are not far-fetched dreams, either. For example, three UND students — Dustin Steckler of Washburn, Justin Shaffer of Larimore, and Michael Shope of Seattle, Wash. — recently won the top prizes in a business plan competition sponsored by U.S. Sen. Kent Conrad and North Dakota Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson. Shope, in fact, took his ideas to the next stage: He operates his own new business in UND’s Ina Mae Rude Entrepreneur Center.

For more information about studying entrepreneurship at UND, go to http://business.und.edu/entr/.