The VC in My Dorm Room

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"I couldn't believe no one else was doing this kind of thing," says Will Chu of his reaction when he first heard about ITU, last spring. "It made all the sense in the world. How could I not want to be part of it?"

Emily Barker is a senior staff writer at Inc.

Related resource: The Young Entrepreneur's Survival Kit

Big Gifts

One reason why entrepreneurship programs are so powerful is that they attract big money. When an entrepreneur wants to "give back" these days, it's often university entrepreneurship programs that benefit. Consider these recent contributions:

Amount: $60 million to the University of Virginia
Donor: Frank Batten Sr., retired chairman of Landmark Communications Inc.
Purpose: Establishing an entrepreneurial resource center in Reston, Va., and creating a venture fund

Amount: $50 million to the University of St. Thomas (Minneapolis- St. Paul)
Donor: Richard Schulze, founder and CEO of Best Buy Co.
Purpose: Expanding entrepreneurial programs and opening a law school

Amount: $25 million to MIT Sloan School of Management
Donor: William Porter, chairman emeritus of E*Trade Group Inc.
Purpose: A new building to house Sloan entrepreneurship programs

Farming Out Their Expertise

When entrepreneurial thinkers develop academic programs, they are sure to exploit every resource. Consider Ball State University and its colleagues in the National Consortium of Entrepreneurial Centers, which offer the services of their students. The fee each charges to have one of its business-school students review a business plan for Beacon Global Venture Capital?

$1,000

Everyone's an Entrepreneur

These days, it's not just M.B.A. students who are packing entrepreneurship courses. Schools such as Alfred University, University of St. Thomas, and Miami University of Ohio are upgrading their programs, thanks to an influx of cash from alumni who are entrepreneurs. The schools are making deliberate efforts to offer entrepreneurship courses to students who ordinarily would never think of taking a business class. It's gone so far that there are even classes in entrepreneurship for poets.

Three years ago St. Thomas began integrating its entrepreneurship classes with the rest of its undergraduate curriculum, says professor Nancy Carter. The goal is to teach an entrepreneurial way of thinking, no matter what the discipline, she says. A nursing student, say, might want to start a business somewhere down the road. This way, he or she will already have the necessary basic knowledge.

So when Trevor Lambert, a double major in theology and philosophy, decided that God didn't intend for him to be a priest after all, he wound up taking an introductory entrepreneurship course. What he learned -- not just basic skills but a new attitude toward taking the leap into starting up -- helped him launch a fledgling log-home-construction business.

At Alfred University, assistant professor David Pistrui recently introduced a course on entrepreneurship and the arts, with the aim of developing a concentration in the subject. Student Tom Czechowski wrote a business plan for his rock band after taking the course. "We're actually making some money," he says. "We started merchandising products -- T-shirts, stickers, postcards. We've got a mailing list, so we can send out newsletters."

For Alfred's art students, says Pistrui, "business is kind of a dirty word, but entrepreneurship is a happy medium because it's kind of an art and a science."

Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

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