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 Dean's
Message
Entrepreneurship at the Marriott School
by Associate
Dean W. Steve Albrecht
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In addition to two undergraduate and five graduate programs, the
Marriott School hosts three outstanding centers: the Center for
Entrepreneurship, the Center for International Business Education
and Research (CIBER), and the Kevin and Debra Rollins Center for
eBusiness.
In this and future issues of Marriott Alumni Magazine, we
will focus on each of these three centers and their importance to
the Marriott School, beginning with the Center for Entrepreneurship.
The Center for Entrepreneurship at the Marriott School was established
in 1989 to educate, encourage, and support students to successfully
start and operate new business ventures and to advance entrepreneurship
internationally. Entrepreneurship is consistent with the pioneering
spirit that led the early saints across the plains and is important
in all types of businesses today.
A significant change has occurred in the business world. Fortune
500 companies have reduced the number of their employees in recent
years. Smaller, more dynamic organizations have provided most of
the new jobs in the U.S. economy during the past fifteen years.
Entrepreneurs can be found in companies of all sizes. They lead
and instigate change, develop and market new products, and invent
new processes for production. They think change. Whether in smaller,
quickly growing companies or in larger corporations that must change
to stay ahead of global competition, they are the leaders.
Director Donald H. Livingstone, a former Arthur Andersen partner,
his staff, and more than 110 Entrepreneur Founders have led the
Center for Entrepreneurship to unparalleled success. The Entrepreneur
Founders not only provide financial and other support to the center
and its entrepreneurial activities, but they also teach classes,
assist students, and provide mentoring, internship, and training
opportunities for students and faculty.
These founders participate because they believe in the center's
mission: "learn, earn, and return." They are involved in a noble
cause at BYU and throughout the world and are largely responsible
for the program's continuously high rank in the "Top Fifty Best
Business Schools for Entrepreneurs" by Success magazine.
As practicing entrepreneurs, many founders teach in the classroom,
where they share their experience and insight. Many travel to address
large groups of students at the school's Entrepreneur Lecture Series.
In other classes, founders team-teach with faculty. Having these
highly successful founders interacting with faculty and students
creates a wonderfully invigorating and highly rewarding learning
experience at the Marriott School.
Through the generous contributions and financial support of founders
and entrepreneurial friends, the Center for Entrepreneurship provides
the following kinds of activities:
- Teaching entrepreneurial skills to both business
and nonbusiness students at BYU.
- An internship program where more than one hundred
students receive half-tuition scholarships each year for completing
an entrepreneurial internship.
- Scholarships for worthy students interested
in entrepreneurship.
- Awards for winners of the Student Entrepreneur
of the Year contest and the Student Business Plan Competition.
- Humanitarian Microenterprise internships assisting
third-world countries such as Mexico, Bangladesh, Peru, Philippines,
South Africa, Guatemala, and Nigeria.
- Entrepreneurship research.
- Funding eight professorships to attract the
best faculty to the Marriott School.
In April 2000, the Center for Entrepreneurship and
the entrepreneurship program at BYU were awarded the NASDAQ and
the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Education awards. These
prestigious awards were given to only seven universities in the
United States. The NASDAQ Center of Entrepreneurial Excellence Award
honors centers that have made enormous contributions in advancing
entrepreneurship as a force in economic growth throughout the world.
The excitement created among our students through the extensive
involvement of real-life entrepreneurs in their education is contagious.
Several highly successful businesses, including past business-plan
and student-entrepreneur-of-the-year award winners Steve Jenkins
(Windows 95.com and Jenesys LLC), Jonathan Coon (1-800-Contacts),
Nathan Gwilliam (Adoption.com), and Michael Phelps (Outsdoorsman.com)
had their beginnings in the entrepreneurship activities of the Marriott
School.
If you are a successful entrepreneur, we encourage you to participate
in the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Marriott School's entrepreneurship
activities. If you are a faculty member, we encourage you to learn
more about entrepreneurship through the activities of our Center
for Entrepreneurship. If you are a student, we encourage you to
join the excellent learning and growing opportunities available
at the Marriott School.
Future Marriott School graduates—accountants, organizational theorists,
public managers, information systems professionals, or finance or
marketing professionals—will benefit from their exposure to entrepreneurship,
globalization and international business, and e-business afforded
them by our outstanding centers and faculty.
More information about the Center for Entrepreneurship is available
online at marriottschool.byu.edu/cfe.
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