The Center for Innovation. Photo courtesy of ICON Architects.

After approval by the State Board of Higher Education on May 29, the School of Entrepreneurship has opened its doors and hopes to be the vehicle that drives students toward starting their own businesses.

Before becoming a school of its own, entrepreneurship was just a major at UND.

“We still have a major,” Interim Director Tim O’Keefe said. “Now the major will be offered through the School of Entrepreneurship.”

Becoming its own school will provide a break from the traditional business class lectures by giving students a more hands-on experience and by offering a curriculum that caters to venturing students.

“It really gives the entrepreneurship program a chance to be independent of the traditional business studies,” Kevin Lunke, a recent graduate who works for the Center for Innovation, said. “We’re learning from actually doing and learning from people that have gone out and started their own businesses.”

One such person they learn from is department lecturer LaRoyce Batchelor, who has started several businesses of her own.

“We really need to be a lot more agile and have more control of the curriculum,” Batchelor said.

Collaboration between other departments is going to become a big part of the school as well.

“It’s a happy marriage between three departments: information echnology, information systems and business communication, and us,” Batchelor said.

An integral part of the entrepreneur program is the Center for Innovation, which formed in 1984 and provides assistance for entrepreneurs to launch new ventures.

“It’s a pod of creative thinking and branching ideals between other people,” entrepreneurship major Jon Puhl said about the Center. “They give you access to a lawyer, an accountant — they give you everything you need.”

Puhl started his own business prior to declaring entrepreneurship as a major but he found there were some bumps along the road. Working through the degree, he hopes to weed out those bumps.

“I don’t really see it as a major,” he said, thinking of teachers as being more like coworkers.

This could explain the way LaRoyce Batchelor views the instructor’s role in educating those in the school.

“Our goal is that when they graduate, they’ve got a business idea and, hopefully, a business license,” Batchelor said.

Kevin Lunke said that the program became a school so it can continue to reach out across campus because it doesn’t matter what a student’s major is, but rather the business they’re involved in.

“Our hope is that we have students take entrepreneur classes who are everything from music to med school majors,” O’Keefe said.

Jamie Hutchinson is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at j[email protected].