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UNLV jumps on the E-Center bandwagon
by Valerie Miller, Las Vegas Business Press
April 3, 2006

Janet Rung, the interim director of the University of Nevada's new Center for Entrepreneurship, or E-Center, maintains it is not surprising that UNLV is starting this program, it's just amazing that it's taken this long.

"There are 190 or so centers across the country, and as a city that has been held up as a model for business start-ups, we are late to the game," Rung said.

All told, the number is almost 10 times that if higher education institutions offering one or more courses in entrepreneurship are totaled, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Public Forum Institute. The organization, which hosts dialogs on entrepreneurship, counts approximately 1,800 colleges in the U.S. providing some entrepreneurship education.

The UNLV E-Center was approved by the Higher Education System's Board of Regents during its March meeting with a goal to provide innovators and inventors the skills they need to market and run a business. A proposal to grant a degree in entrepreneurship is scheduled to go before the regents in June.

CORNELL MODEL STUDIED

Currently, only UNLV business majors can take the majority of entrepreneurship classes, although Rung hopes the curriculum will be open to the public as early as the fall. While the center is now under the guidance of the College of Business, Rung sees it following in the footsteps of many university-wide programs, including that of Cornell University.

According to John Jacquette, the executive director of Cornell's University-wide Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise Program, there is no cookie-cutter model for entrepreneurship centers, but they do fall into two broad categories: "magnet" centers (those confined to one area of a school) and "radiant" centers (programs that spread out across the entire campus, such as Cornell's).

"The difference here is that we are a multi-college program," Jacquette noted of Cornell's 14-year-old program. "This was started as a long-term project, not as an area of study in the business department." The Ithaca, N.Y.-based university strives to have 3,000 to 4,000 students a year participate in what Jacquette calls "enterprising activity."

UNLV College of Business Dean Richard Flaherty said there is an upside to bringing the university's existing entrepreneurship programs under one roof; namely, making the center a focal point for gathering private donations.

"We already have some individuals who have made some contributions, some for $25,000, some $50,000 and one for $100,000," Flaherty said. "We have some naming opportunities. We could put somebody's name on it for $5 million."

PROGRAMS ON UPSWING

"In the last five years, the number of entrepreneurship (programs) have increased," commented Jonathan Ortmans, the president of the Public Forum Institute. He noted that entrepreneurship programs separate from the business school are becoming the norm. Twenty-four 4-year institutions in the U.S. now have programs outside the business schools, while another 186 offer entrepreneur courses for non-business majors.

"You have to bring entrepreneurship into other disciplines if you truly want to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit," Ortmans said. "If you look at Dell or Microsoft, very few of those (founders) went to business schools."

Stanford University based its Stanford Technology Ventures Program around its School of Engineering, although it is open to all students, explained co-founder and executive director Tina Seelig. The 10-year-old program has proved so successful that it holds conferences worldwide on entrepreneurship. The program boasts five full-time faculty, eight adjunct faculty and five staff members. Approximately 1,500 students are taught at the center, including 15 seeking doctorates.

Seelig didn't see UNLV having too much trouble getting funding for the E-Center. "It is easy to get money as a start-up educational institution," she said. "It is harder later on" because donors want to see the quality of students who go to work for bigger companies.

Flaherty feels that the E-Center can operate on approximately $250,000 a year for the initial years. By comparison, another entrepreneurship center UNLV studied -- Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- runs its MIT Entrepreneurship Center on $600,000 a year.

"Our goal is to really create a sense of entrepreneurship across the campus," Rung said. "My goal is to help other colleges coordinate a minor that will be open to non-business majors."

Learn more about the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship

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