Penn State Among Best For Entrepreneurship

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (March 16, 2005)—Penn State's Smeal College of Business and its Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship have helped the University to a top-tier ranking in Entrepreneur magazine's annual assessment of the best entrepreneurship programs in the nation.

Penn State, which also ranked in the top tier of last year's Entrepreneur report, was recently listed as the hottest school for entrepreneurs in the 2005 edition of the Kaplan- and Newsweek-produced guide to "America's Hottest Colleges."

"We've launched a variety of initiatives in the past few years that are preparing students to successfully think and act as entrepreneurs, whether they are starting their own businesses or are part of larger organizations," said Tony Warren, director of the Farrell Center. "This focus on innovation is the key to success in the global economy."

With opportunities across business, engineering, science, and a variety of other disciplines, the University features numerous entrepreneurship courses at the undergraduate level including market pull technology commercialization, technology-based entrepreneurship, and new product development.

MBA students at Smeal learn to identify, initiate, fund, and develop new business opportunities as part of the college's Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship portfolio. A key aspect of the portfolio is the opportunity to manage the college's Garber Venture Capital Fund, which has already supported investments in two companies: Schoolwires and Alphasource Procurement Systems.

With a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Farrell Center has worked to broaden the reach of entrepreneurship education to more students through the development of a computer-enhanced learning platform. The technology allows students to interact through the computer platform itself, responding to problems or opportunities defined by the instructor.

The research center is also in the midst of developing a Center for Entrepreneurship Learning (CEL) at the University, which will be used to train teachers not only from Penn State, but also from other two- and four-year colleges and high schools. The role of the CEL will be to create a laboratory environment where teachers will learn how to use problem-based learning for entrepreneurship education and develop problems and courseware tailored to their own needs.

For more on entrepreneurship at Penn State, visit http://entrepreneurship.psu.edu.