Priorities:University of Notre Dame Student Priorities

ND.jpeg

Entrepreneurship Minor

Description

We would like to work with other students and our administration to expand the current Entrepreneurship Minor to be accessible to students of each College: Business, Science, Arts and Letters, and Engineering. This minor will offer classes in entrepreneurship, innovation, and design thinking. It will also create infrastructure to disseminate information regarding entrepeneurship/innovative activities, clubs and programs. Participation in the minor will make candidates for internships or jobs more attractive with the development of skills in creative and design thinking.

Problem Addressed

Entrepreneurial and innovative thinking are not unique to a business education and as such resources to develop these skills should not be limited to business students. Currently on campus, we have a deficiency of non-business entrepreneurial courses/activities in combination with little to no availability for non-business students to take a business course. This results in students being pushed away or shut out of developing skills important to many career paths. Further, for those students that wish to pursue these entrepreneurial activities, it would have to be on an extracurricular basis. As busy as students are with their own courseload and often College-specific extracurricular activities, it is hard to find time and effort to participate in entrepreneurial activities. Allowing students to earn a minor will provide greater incentive to put in the extra time to develop the skills.

Implementation

In order to implement this idea, we must overcome the barriers of revenue and communication. First, revenue is tied to each business student in a business class while there is none tied to a non-business student. And second, there are high walls erected between each College, preventing communication and collaboration. In order to solve both of these issues, we propose housing the Entrepreneurship Minor under the umbrella of the Provost's Office. The current Dean of the College of Science, Dr. Gregory Crawford, is in a transition to becoming an Associate Provost with an interest in Entrepreneurship tied to Silicon Valley. Using this connection, we hope to work with Dean Crawford to prevent the minor from being housed under one of the four Colleges. By doing this, revenue will not be tied down and there will be a central form of communication. To further ensure continued conversation, we also hope to enact a formalized leadership structure that encompasses students and faculty among each College. This idea is addressed above. In terms of creating the body of the Entrepreneurship Minor, we hope to utilize what has already been established and if needed, add other courses or workshops that have a greater focus on non-business subjects. This will allow the minor to truly be open to all disciplines.

Future Direction

Before implementing this big idea, we need to make sure that the supporting structures are already in place. To do this, we will work closely with Dean Crawford and the deans of the other Colleges in order to develop a leadership framework. With this framework in place, we can work with the current Entrepreneurship Minor's administration to expand it to cover all four colleges. Then, we will work with our peers and faculty to integrate this minor into other Colleges by shaping current courses or programs to fit into entrepreneurial/innovative thinking. Finally and if needed, we will develop new courses and programs that may address entrepreneurship or innovation from a different lens that may appeal more to the students and faculty of each College.

Additional Links

University of Notre Dame