UW-Madison entrepreneurship programs make top 25 list
The Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison was recognized by The Princeton Review for Entrepreneur magazine as having one of the top 25 entrepreneurship programs at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in the country.
Out of the more than 2,000 schools surveyed, Wisconsin ranks 19th in the nation among graduate entrepreneurship programs and 23rd among undergraduate programs. It was the only Big Ten program to make both undergraduate and graduate lists.
The full ranking can be viewed at http://www.entrepreneur.com/topcolleges.
“Behind the top-ranked schools is not only a great formal classroom experience, but a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching entrepreneurship that embraces and encourages a student’s vision to build a successful business,” says Robert Franek, The Princeton Review’s senior vice president of publishing and nationally recognized expert on college admissions.
The Wisconsin School of Business was evaluated based on key criteria in the areas of teaching entrepreneurship business fundamentals in the classroom, staffing departments with successful entrepreneurs, excellence in mentorship, providing experiential or entrepreneurial opportunities outside of the classroom, as well as nontraditional, distinguishable aspects of their programs.
“We are very proud to be one of only a few entrepreneurship programs to be ranked at both the undergraduate and graduate level for the second year in a row,” says Dan Olszewski, director of the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship at the Wisconsin School of Business. “The University of Wisconsin–Madison is among the earliest innovators in entrepreneurship education and continues to train graduates to positively impact the local, state and national economy through new venture creation. We are excited to be able to expand access to our entrepreneurship training to students from across campus.”
The Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship was established in 1986 and provides a variety of programs and services relating to entrepreneurial management and development within the Wisconsin School of Business and across the UW–Madison campus. The Financial Times ranks Wisconsin ninth in the world and sixth in the U.S. for entrepreneurship.
The Weinert Center, along with the Initiative for Studies in Transformational Entrepreneurship (INSITE), works to bring students and researchers from across UW–Madison together to explore potential commercialization of technological opportunities.
Every year, students from all disciplines on campus are exposed to the field of entrepreneurship through various programs in new venture creation, financing new ventures, strategic management of technology, legal and regulatory influences on innovation and venture creation and related policy issues. UW–Madison is a recipient of a prestigious $5 million Kauffman Foundation grant to further expand entrepreneurship on campus.
