McNair Center for Free Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Introduces Minor
The University of St. Thomas – Cameron School of Business has just announced a Free Enterprise & Entrepreneurship minor, available to students through the McNair Center for Free Enterprise & Entrepreneurship.
The minor is the first ever of its kind offered at the McNair Center. Students can take the first two classes- Foundations of Financial and Managerial Accounting and Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management—which will be later joined by four other courses offered later in the semester to make up the minor.
The minor’s curriculum was developed by McNair Center director Dr. Martin Lindenberg. According to Lindenberg, understanding the basic principles of entrepreneurship can help students in any field achieve greater success in their career. In fact, an academic study revealed that those with entrepreneurial experience earn 30 percent higher lifetime earnings that those without.
“The individual characteristics that define entrepreneurs—which is being a self-starter, creative, innovative, taking the initiative, being adaptable, being a problem-solver—those are all highly learnable if you go about doing it the right way,” said Lindenberg. “Those kinds of capabilities, attitudes, skills and behaviors will make people successful in whatever they do.”
Lindenberg helped to develop the Free Enterprise & Entrepreneurship Program by meeting with leaders and faculty members from academic departments throughout the university, receiving input on what they believed the program needed to ensure student success.
Lindenberg also commented on the importance of an entrepreneurial education, regardless of each student’s ultimate career path: “No matter what a student’s ultimate pursuit or how many times they change careers, this course will give them a toolkit that they can carry through life and will allow them to be more successful in whatever they do.”
First enrollment in the minor program will officially begin in the spring 2017 semester.
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Alanna Shaffer
Staff Writer, covering MetroMBA's news beat for Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas.
