The Bauer College of Business’ entrepreneurship program will no longer have to settle for being second best.
The Cyvia and Melvin Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship at UH took the No. 1 ranking on The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur’s sixth annual list of the nation’s top undergraduate entrepreneurship programs on Tuesday.
Program Director Dan Steppe attributes the accomplishment to the program’s dynamic approach to education, which he said has flourished during the past four years.
"It’s a combination of students, professors and process," Steppe said.
Babson College’s Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, which held last year’s premier spot, wasranked No. 2.
The UH program’s faculty is made up entirely of professional entrepreneurs, whereas professional entrepreneurs at Babson College only make up 50 percent of the faculty.
"We’re trying to teach people how to be entrepreneurs, not just about entrepreneurship," Steppe said. "All of our professors have all run, started or been part of successful companies."
With an enrollment of 1,893 students, 50 percent of students at the Bauer College of Business have started a business and 88 percent of those businesses are still operating. Babson College’s entrepreneurship program has an enrollment of 1,776 students, of which 40 percent have started their own business and 50 percent are still in business. Bauer also offers its students 10 mentorship programs, while Babson’s program offers only two.
Students of the program must complete a personal success model in which they gauge what level of success they wish to obtain and determine how successful their future business must be to achieve them.Steppe said providing students with tangible goals is the cornerstone of the program, created in 1993.
"The real key is how you are going to be personally successful in this program," Steppe said. "We personalize business. If you want to live a successful life in this country, you have to be able to support it."
