The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor will expand its entrepreneurial education offerings with the addition of a new minor, available to students campus-wide starting in January.
The 15-credit minor will require students to participate in a minimum of two semesters of entrepreneurship-related extracurricular activities. Examples include work on a business venture, not for credit assignments, and participating in events such as the Center for Entrepreneurship’s Startup Treks, the optiMize Social Innovation Challenge, and the School of Public Health’s Innovation in Action competition.
The new academic program is a result of recommendations put forth by a multidisciplinary task force on campus-wide entrepreneurship education and substantial student input, Zurbuchen says.
“Today’s world demands graduates are prepared to be highly collaborative problem solvers ready to tackle big challenges,” says Thomas Zurbuchen, head of Innovate Blue, which launched this fall to make entrepreneurship education available to all undergraduates. He will oversee the new minor.
“We believe all students have the capacity to be innovators,” Zurbuchen says. “This campus-wide minor provides them with the knowledge, skills, and motivation to (embrace) entrepreneurial behavior and innovative thinking necessary to succeed.”
About 200 students are expected to enroll once it launches.
“I see this minor as an important aspect of what the student experience should be in the 21st century,” says Andrew Martin, dean of the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which will house the minor. “We’re helping our students translate what they learn in the classroom to tangible results in communities through a structure that places Michigan on the cutting edge of student-driven social innovation.”
The university will continue to offer its nine-credit program in entrepreneurship as an alternative for students unable to commit to the minor’s course load requirements.
For more information about new minor, click here.
