Poole College Enhances Entrepreneurship Minor for Students Across NC State

From engineers to artists, students in wide-ranging disciplines at NC State are aiming to build entrepreneurial skills to diversify and excel.

Enter Poole College’s newly redesigned business entrepreneurship minor. It better prepares non-business students to make an impact in their career and addresses employer expectations for workers with creativity, problem-solving, critical-thinking and other abilities.   

“At the end of the day, you may wind up being an entrepreneur because you have to start and run your own venture,” says Jeff Pollack, a Poole College professor and research director for NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship, a partner with the minor program. “The minor gives people good insight into that.” 

It also provides insight into working on someone else’s startup team or for corporate and government organizations, driven by a mindset of innovating and creating opportunities. 

The well-established entrepreneurship minor, open to all NC State undergraduates, has been updated to incorporate more core principles and hands-on experiences non-business students need to develop their own enterprise or contribute at another startup. Enrollment represents varied majors.

“It’s going to be really valuable to have more students from different disciplines experienced in entrepreneurial thinking,” Pollack says. “That’s what employers want. We’re hopefully helping students find better job prospects.”

The minor’s redesign included adding two courses taught by Pollack, Poole’s Lynn T. Clark II Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship — and a focus on partnering with NC State’s colleges and departments on courses and agreements that meet the minor’s objectives.    

The new classes explore the process of entrepreneurship through developing a concept and problem-solving and the financial basics of a small business venture by creating an income statement and related skills.     

The minor includes the application of skills in all classes and ends with a hands-on capstone, ideally related to each student’s major. 

“Through the experiential process, they will have worked with their own or someone else’s venture idea,” Pollack says. “It’s a more effective and efficient model for students external to Poole, so they’re getting exactly what they want and need.” 

Opportunities outside the classroom also offer students what they want and need. 

These  include a practicum class in the minor’s curriculum, a mentorship program run by NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and the university-wide NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic, where students work with real clients to grow a startup.  

“Students need to be able to use their skills in a setting that’s not academic,” Pollack says. “When an employer hires a student from NC State, they’re going to be able to walk in the door and make a contribution starting on day one. That’s really what this minor can do.”

The updated minor emphasizes collaboration between NC State’s colleges and NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship, part of the Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs. Stephen Markham is executive director of NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Goodnight Distinguished Professor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Poole College.

The minor reflects a multidisciplinary approach through reciprocity agreements with departments and colleges to count some of their internal courses toward the minor.

“Students can apply their entrepreneurial thinking directly to projects in their own majors or in a discipline they are interested in experiencing,” says Jennifer Capps, assistant vice provost of NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Whatever discipline students in the minor are pursuing, the skills they gain in identifying opportunities and communicating ideas to stakeholders can be applied in diverse fields.  

“Students often tell us that their experience in entrepreneurial thinking has allowed them to stand out in job interviews,” Capps says. “It can open up new career pathways they may not have considered before.”

That broadens the possible impact of NC State graduates who have a foundation and real-world experience in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

“When students are prepared to identify needs and create solutions in ways that make sense for communities both locally and globally,” Capps says, “we cultivate environments where great ideas have the potential to flourish.”