| UNC-CH
Entrepreneurship education for all
Let’s say you’re a Carolina student, and you wake up with an entrepreneurial idea you’d like to explore...
Maybe you’ve known you want to be an entrepreneur your entire life. Or maybe the whole concept of entrepreneurship is new, intriguing and slightly intimidating. How do you create an entrepreneurial learning path that works for you?
Our four-part series “Entrepreneurship education for all” examines how Carolina students are taking advantage of courses, programs and hands-on learning opportunities from the Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurship Center at the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Discover how these programs work together to give students of all backgrounds the flexibility to shape their own experiences with entrepreneurship – including opportunities that open unexpected doors and lead to exciting professional journeys.
Carolina students from the Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship and Kenan-Flagler Business School carve inventive learning paths that combine anything-but-ordinary experiences. Search by the letter “E” in the UNC-Chapel Hill course catalogue, and you’ll find many of the departments you’d expect: English, Economics and Education, to name a few. What you won’t find is a departmental listing for “Entrepreneurship.” That might be surprising considering U.S. News and World Report consistently ranks UNC-Chapel Hill as having one of the top undergraduate entrepreneurship programs in the country.
Carolina senior Marianne Cruzat has always been wired to be an entrepreneur. In her first year at Carolina, she was already working on a startup, but wasn’t sure of the path she should take to gain additional experience and find resources. The Entrepreneurship Center and Shuford Program both provided clarity.
For Zac Gonzalez, a senior economics major who is earning a minor in entrepreneurship, his dual involvement in the Shuford Program and Entrepreneurship Center at the business school influenced his career path in ways he hadn’t imagined. As a first-year student at Carolina, he didn’t realize he’d take the path of an entrepreneur.
Launching a startup is all about growth – personal and professional. Startup founder Dezbee McDaniel saw how getting involved in the Shuford Program for Entrepreneurship and the business school’s Entrepreneurship Center helped him grow as an student and young entrepreneur – while also helping him continue to build his business today.