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Two University of Michigan schools are joining together to found the university’s first master’s degree in entrepreneurship after a Board of Regents vote Thursday.
The College of Engineering and the Ross School of Business will offer a joint program that will train students to evolve their ideas into inventions and businesses. The program has to be approved by the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan in October.
U-M President Mary Sue Coleman said the university would be leveraging two of its best schools to create the new program.
“It’s a tremendous addition to the entrepreneurial climate flourishing across the university,” she said. “It dovetails with innovation and encouraging and nurturing entrepreneurial spirit.”
If approved by the Presidents Council, the program will begin accepting students in fall 2012.
The one-year program will see students take 36 credits, participating in science and engineering focused courses, along with business-focused courses.
The program will help prepare students for the new ways business and engineering fields are requiring students to be educated, according to Dean of Engineering David Munson.
“The real-time, global economy demands an ever quicker pace and increasing integration between engineering and business,” Munson said in a statement. “This joint program is one of the ways Michigan Engineering is responding to this evolution and training students to spark change and succeed.”
The university has been a recent hotbed of entrepreneurial culture, according to university officials.
In 2010, there were nearly 300 discoveries at the university that went through the Office of Technology Transfer, which led to 153 patent applications and 10 spinout companies. Fifty student-run companies have utilized the TechArb student business accelerator, which is managed by the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Zell-Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.
The university has also held business plan competitions such as the Michigan Business Challenge and 1,000 Pitches. Approximately 50 teams participated in the 28th annual Michigan Business Challenge and a record 3,000 teams took part in 1,000 Pitches.
Alison Davis-Blake, the dean of the Ross School of Business, said capitalizing on this atmosphere by combining two successful programs will be playing to the university’s best attributes.
“One of the university’s greatest strengths is its ability to foster interdisciplinary collaboration,” she said in a statement. “A degree that aligns two world-renowned schools like Ross and the College of Engineering in a quest to promote entrepreneurship is timely and valuable for students, faculty and the economy.”
Kyle Feldscher covers K-12 education for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com or you can follow him on Twitter.
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