Entrepreneurial Spirit

At the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business, we teach entrepreneurship as the new leadership model for the 21st century. It doesn’t matter if you are starting a new business, working for a large corporation or building a nonprofit. Every organization can benefit from entrepreneurial leadership skills: innovative thinking, identifying opportunities, creating new products, acquiring critical resources, building strong teams, designing marketing strategies, and managing growth and development.

Our executive director of entrepreneurial programs, Michael Glauser, has extensive experience as an entrepreneur, business consultant, and university professor. He has built successful companies, consulted with numerous startups, and published books on entrepreneurial success. Mike is joined by Natalee Champlin, our administrator for entrepreneurial programs. Natalee has started her own business and has a passion for marketing, social entrepreneurship, and new venture creation. Together they are leading the effort to foster innovative thinking and entrepreneurial skills across Utah State University and our community.

We teach the skills of entrepreneurship through innovative curriculum, student-led initiatives, and community-based programs. For example, our newly designed MBA with an emphasis in enterprise development teaches students how to start new ventures and build existing companies. In these courses, students have significant field experiences starting a business and/or consulting with entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies. In addition, our new undergraduate minor in entrepreneurship takes students through the actual sequence of events required to start and build a new business. The minor utilizes a state-of-the-art curriculum that includes coursework, field experiences and online materials, and is available to both business and non-business majors. It can be completed during the school year or in an intensive, two-month summer program.

Our Entrepreneurship Club is our student-led organization. Membership is open to students in all colleges, departments, and regional campuses. The club sponsors a number of competitions, workshops and conferences throughout the year, including Entrepreneurship Week – a full week of activities that promote innovative thinking and new venture creation. Perhaps most important, the club has a number of student teams that assist with critical stages of business development. These teams help with idea generation, business model development, business plan creation, prototype development, marketing strategies and execution plans. Club members learn these skills through coursework, field experiences, and faculty advisors, and then consult with other students and community members who want to start their own businesses.

Through the school’s Small Enterprise Education and Development program (SEED), our students get an opportunity to apply what they are learning by helping entrepreneurs in developing countries. The mission of the SEED program is to provide USU students with a hands-on, once-in-a-life time learning experience while simultaneously educating people in developing economies in new business creation and development skills.

The programs and activities offered by the Huntsman School of Business allow our students to bridge the gap between formal classroom education (knowing) and real-world experience (doing). We are not content to just discuss entrepreneurship; we put ideas into practice. It is all part of our mission to inspire students to “Dare Mighty Things.”

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