Thursday, April 15, 2010
Entrepreneurship minor launching in fall 2010 for all majors
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Contact for more information:
Wendy Knipe Bredhold Media Relations Specialist, News & Information Services 812/461-5259 Bryan K. Bourdeau, instructor in business, said the interdisciplinary minor is designed to foster an entrepreneurial mindset of creativity and innovative thought and provide students with an entrepreneurial supplement to their academic major. "The entrepreneurship minor seeks to prepare students to become enterprising individuals," Bourdeau said. "Today′s employers are seeking students who exercise entrepreneurial thinking. Not every student who enrolls in the minor may want to start a business. Development of their entrepreneurial mindset is the focus of the minor." Dr. Nancy Kovanic, instructor in business, said, "Students from any major are eligible to enroll in our new entrepreneurship minor. Having students with a variety of backgrounds and experience will enhance the classroom experience for students." The entrepreneurship minor will provide students with the ability to recognize opportunities and the insight, self-esteem, knowledge and skills to act on those opportunities. It will include immersion into entrepreneurial mindset development, instruction in opportunity recognition, ideation, critical thinking, creative problem solving, commercializing a concept, marshalling resources in the face of risk, and initiating a business venture. The entrepreneurship minor will focus on personal development, enterprise development, and enterprise initiation. Bourdeau said, "The minor will offer a unique, harmonized set of courses where the outcomes of one course feed into the other. The minor will be very hands-on, incorporating virtual gaming, product and prototype software exposure, and entrepreneurial activities. We want to unleash students′ entrepreneurial intuition." Dr. Kevin Celuch, professor of marketing, who will teach with Bourdeau a new course called Entrepreneurship Ideation and Innovation, said, "We want students to help us co-create a new business class experience, one that will capitalize on their unique talents in the service of self and entrepreneurial discovery." The entrepreneurship minor has been in development within the College of Business Entrepreneurship Task Force (ETF) since 2006. In 2008-2009 the entrepreneurship rationale was completed along with a new program petition and new course petitions for the minor, including MNGT: 352 Entrepreneurship Ideation and Innovation, MNGT: 353 Entrepreneurship Feasibility Analysis, and MNGT: 354 Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Courses in the entrepreneurship minor for all USI majors will be held in the entrepreneurship lab in the new Business and Engineering Center starting fall 2010. Class size is limited. The structure of the entrepreneurship minor is 18 hours: 9 hours of designated management courses for the minor MNGT 352, MNGT 353, MNGT 354, and 9 hours designated from a student′s major approved by your respective academic advisor. Prerequisite for MNGT 352 is junior standing. Dr. Mohammed Khayum, dean of the College of Business, said, "I see the entrepreneurship minor as providing an educational experience that allows students to explore their potential, amplify their creativity, and do things that will benefit others." For more information about the new entrepreneurship minor at USI, contact Bourdeau at 812/461-5247 or bbourdeau@usi.edu. |
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