For business schools, entre­pre­neur­ship is a bridge to other parts of campus

Dean David Thomas, who took the helm of Georgetown University’s school of business in August, has been making the rounds lately pitching prospective donors on a plan to raise $50,000 for what he describes as a university “seed fund.”

The fresh money won’t be used to bankroll fledgling student ventures or faculty’s groundbreaking research ideas; in fact it won’t even stay in the business school for very long. The money is to be distributed to professors in other departments who design courses rooted in entre­pre­neur­ship.

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(Jeffrey MacMillan/Capital Business) - David Thomas, dean of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, is raising a $50,000 “seed fund” to pay for development of courses on entrepreneurship in academic departments outside of the business school.

(Jeffrey MacMillan/Capital Business) - American University students Salman Dossoni, left, and Warren Flood participate in the Global Entrepreneurship class, taught by Richard Linowes, at the university’s Kogod School of Business.

Thomas’s effort is part of a larger trend by business school leaders to establish entre­pre­neur­ship programs that act as academic bridges to students who study subjects as varied as art, public policy and engineering.

Business school was once largely the purview of students keen on pursuing careers in accounting, finance or management. But now graduates of all stripes are clamoring for help navigating a modern workplace where innovation, savvy and hard work often trump book smarts.

Nationally, the case for entre­pre­neur­ship is building. The White House often points to data from the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes entrepreneurship and its role in the economy, that asserts net new job growth comes almost exclusively from young companies. President Obama has even made entre­pre­neur­ship and new business creation a cornerstone of his economic recovery plans.

But for universities, entrepreneurship itself is relatively new as a field of study. There’s less research and fewer textbooks to support it than other subjects, leaving some schools to struggle with how to best build it into the curriculum.

An academic bridge

Students from across George Mason University’s Northern Virginia campuses were eligible to enroll in a minor program focused on entre­pre­neur­ship at the start of the academic year. It’s an undertaking that was three years in the making.

Mahesh Joshi, an associate professor of management, was one of the program’s architects. The classes build on a growing belief at George Mason that entre­pre­neur­ship should not belong to any one department, he said.

“If business schools said that creative ideas can only come from the school of business, it would be to their detriment,” Joshi said. “They can arise anywhere.”

“I ask students to interview successful entrepreneurs, and then I ask them to check their functional background. Most of them don’t have a business degree,” he added.

The University of Maryland in College Park has made similar efforts to blend academic programs. As the university introduces more interdisciplinary courses to its curriculum, the business school has devised entrepreneurship classes for students in journalism and engineering, among others.

At George Washington University, students outside the business school were invited for the first time last year to participate in an annual business plan competition. The four-year-old contest rewards innovative and viable ideas with prize money.

The universities say these programs are poised for growth as demand among students climbs. Graduates today are less likely than their parents to work in just one career field and high-profile young entrepreneurs have made the prospect of self-employment seem more attainable.