The USASBE (United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship) Annual Conference has become one of the premiere events for educators to gather around the topic of entrepreneurship. Any of you who teach and do research in any topic related to entrepreneurship, small business, and innovation should consider attending this event. I attended back in the 1980s when it was first getting started. When I got back into teaching in the late 1990s USASBE was the first group that I made sure to link back up with as I re-entered the academy.
It attracts attendees from schools of all sizes, with missions ranging from teaching colleges to research universities. The conference will be in Orlando, Florida from January 11-14, 2007.
I hope to see some of you at USASBE this year!
Dr Jeff Cornwall
Co-founder of The Entrepreneurial Mind, serial entrepreneur and professor of entrepreneurship.
I wish profs from other disciplines would incorporate entrepreneurship courses into their curricula as well. As a Computer Science major from 1988-1992, there was an underlying assumption that everyone in the major was going into aerospace, so a very heavy dose of ideal software lifecycle was drilled into us in just about every course. We had a few instructors/professors who had side software businesses, and yet no “software business” courses. Today, I bet a huge chunk of my fellow alums from the time have or are working for or running small firms. And when I ask college kids about CS and Engineering curricula today and whether there are any courses that focus on the entrepreneurial or small business skills they’ll need, they look at me like I’m from another planet.
The good news is that this is starting to change. There are grant programs from the Coleman Foundation (we have one of these grants) and Kauffman Foundation to take entrepreneurship across campus. These programs are making significant progress.
Many colleges are offering Entrepreneurship minors to support students from non-business disciplines who are interested in entrepreneurial careers. Ours is relatively new, and we already have students from music, art, social work, audio engineering, sociology, and journalism.
At USASBE we are in the planning stages to host a Doctoral Student Consortium for students from non-business disciplines. We hope to instill a linkage to entrepreneurship in these young academics early in their careers.
Other disciplines are doing some very innovative things in this area, particularly graduate programs in engineering and health sciences.
Education is always a little bit behind the real world, but we are rapidly making progress in integrating entrepreneurship across campuses all over the country.
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