“In today’s rapidly evolving business environment, companies and organizations of all types and sizes desperately need employees with entrepreneurship skills if they are to survive, much less adapt and grow.” – Dr. Dean McFarlin, Dean and Professor of Management

A conventional view is that entrepreneurship programs just teach students how to launch new companies. While startups are part of the equation, our redesigned Entrepreneurship major, which launches in fall 2016, embraces a broader perspective. Specifically, the redesigned major will give students interested in joining larger firms, government agencies and nonprofits after graduation a competitive advantage by instilling the entrepreneurial mindset those organizations seek.

“In today’s rapidly evolving business environment, companies and organizations of all types and sizes desperately need employees with entrepreneurship skills if they are to survive, much less adapt and grow,” said Dr. Dean McFarlin. “Students will experience what it’s like to be a real entrepreneur under the guidance of outstanding faculty and mentors.”

Our redesigned Entrepreneurship major includes three world-class experiences for students. In their New Venture Experience, students will work in teams to conceive, launch, run and exit a microbusiness for a year with a $5,000 investment from the school.

In their Entrepreneurial Finance course, majors leverage our partnership with the leading angel group in the region, BlueTree Allied Angles. Our students attend BlueTree meetings and help screen applicants for funding. Best of all, they will invest real money in some of the most exciting startups in the state. And, in their Capstone class, entrepreneurship majors will help struggling entrepreneurs turn their businesses around as well as help more established firms strategize about new products or services.

These programmatic changes dovetail with the arrival of two new faculty in entrepreneurship. Mark Geiger, a new Ph.D. from Kansas, studies HR issues as they relate to entrepreneurship. And we are particularly excited to have Dr. Peter Gianiodis joining us from Clemson as the inaugural holder of the Merle E. Gilliand Professorship in Entrepreneurial Finance. His research sits at the intersection of tech commercialization, entrepreneurial finance and strategy.

We received a $1,000,000 pledge from a generous donor to support ideation and prototyping spaces that will be part of our new Center for Excellence in Entrepreneurship.

Beyond creating innovative programs and adding top-notch faculty, we’re also creating cutting-edge facilities with our plan to transform Rockwell Hall. That plan includes building several Centers of Excellence that will build on our existing strengths, focus on student experiences and help us seize new opportunities. In fact, we recently received a $1,000,000 pledge from a generous donor to support ideation and prototyping spaces that will be part of our new Center for Excellence in Entrepreneurship.