At Creighton, the call to serve and follow the Jesuit tradition, “to educate the whole person and leave the world a better place,” is something that is a part of being a student from day one. As of this year, the College of Business is offering a new social entrepreneurship major that carries out this mission.
Dr. Anne York, an associate professor and the director of entrepreneurship programs, had the idea when she first came to Creighton.
“I tried to think of how Creighton could differentiate our entrepreneurship programs by drawing on the university’s Jesuit mission and our strong health science and physical science programs,” she said.
When York first arrived, the College of Business offered a general entrepreneurship program, but she hoped to expand it. In 2007, she launched the Bioscience Entrepreneurship Program, which is aimed toward pre-med students.
Once the BEP program was running, York turned to the social aspect of entrepreneurship. She worked with Laura Mizaur, an instructor of strategy and entrepreneurship, and Taylor Keen, a marketing and management instructor, to propose the Social Entrepreneurship Program.
“It is their vision for the program that has made it the really creative, vibrant program we have now,” York said of Mizaur and Keen.
Through the help of other faculty members inside and outside of the College of Business, the program was approved in the fall of 2009.
Dr. Peter Gallo, who specializes in social entrepreneurship and sustainability, joined the business faculty this year and will play a major role in implementing the Social Entrepreneurship Program with Mizaur and Keen.
“Professors here who aren’t in our program were behind the mission and that was a great resource that we had,” Gallo said. “We were lucky here that other professors approved of what we were doing.”
Students began to enter the major program last spring, and the minor program became available this fall.
Gallo believes that students who might not want to pursue a business degree can benefit from a small amount of entrepreneurship training.
“We feel that it plays off of the strengths and interests of the overall student body,” Gallo said. “Creighton has a social mission, and many of our students have volunteer experience. We can teach them to use business strategies to accomplish the social goals that they are interested in.”
The social entrepreneurship major is aimed toward students who wish to use business to implement social change. The major brochure describes a social entrepreneur as someone who “assesses success in terms of the impact he or she has on society in addition to profit.”
While the major is only open to business students, the social entrepreneurship minor is open to anyone. This enables non-business students to pursue a business minor without having to complete the numerous prerequisites that are required by the College of Business.
Arts & Sciences junior and Spanish major Laura Palmer is now pursuing the social entrepreneurship minor because she was not finding everything that she wanted in a major in the College of Arts & Sciences.
“I am very passionate about immigration issues, and I think the combination of Spanish and social entrepreneurship can really take me anywhere in the direction of working to reform not only the legal ‘business’ aspect of immigration, but also the social, human side,” she said.
Part-time psychology student Tierre Maclin is pursuing the minor as well. Maclin is a psychology major, but he hopes that a social entrepreneurship minor will give him the business knowledge to someday open community centers in North Omaha. He believes that numerous Arts & Sciences students are going to take advantage of the new minor.
“Our student body is one that wants to inspire and implement change all over the world,” he said. “I know that when other socially aware students find out what this program is all about, the social entrepreneurship staff will have difficulty keeping up with the demand.”
Through this program and the bioscience entrepreneurship program, the College of Business is hoping to help students stand out once they graduate and look for jobs as well as foster students’ willingness to help others. Gallo said there are not many other universities that allow non-business students to pursue business minors.
“It’s a pretty unique program,” he said. “Having the extra education and the minor will give [students] and edge.”
In order to graduate with a minor in social entrepreneurship, students must complete two social entrepreneurship courses and an internship along with three business electives.
“We hope that this will be a set of classes that will be very attractive to students in terms of having a tool set so they will be able to form non-profits or businesses with a social mission,” Keen said.
The first class that students take is Mizaur’s innovation and creativity class. Mizaur said that the class helps students find what they want to change in the world along with finding their vocation.
Gallo, who teaches the strategic management course, enjoys showing students a different side of business in his classes. “What is exciting about teaching these classes is that [students] get exposed to different, creative, nontraditional business models to show them that business doesn’t always have to be the same,” he said.
Mizaur, Gallo, Keen and York all hope that the program will carry out what Creighton and the College of Business stand for.
“The program was really designed to support students as they explore their ability to confront issues they care about and helping them piece together a road map to successfully fight those battles,” Mizaur said.
“It is helping meet the overall mission of the College of Business, and it is guided by our Jesuit leaders and promotes justice,” Keen said. “We are trying to utilize our curriculum to help nurture the entrepreneurial spirit and, in the process, to create leaders who are going to help change the world.”
For more information about the social entrepreneurship major or minor, the College of Business Administration will have a booth set up at the Major/Minor Fair on Nov. 4.