career connection entrepreneurship
BUILD A BUSINESS:
Supporting Student Entrepreneurs
By Zach Thomas
Raise your hand if you’ve thought of starting your
own business someday. Maybe you have a great
idea for a new service that could change the world.
Or perhaps you want to launch a startup that could
become a Fortune 500 company. But starting a
business is hard––a great concept is just one small
part of the puzzle. You also need to know how to
craft a business plan, how to find and secure seed
capital from investors, how to hire and fire, how to
market effectively, and how to scale
appropriately.
Like most other business schools, the Culverhouse College of
Business at The University of Alabama offers a wide variety of
majors that include accounting, finance, marketing, economics,
plus a number of concentrations and minors.
And for students who are enrolled in the management major, they
may also focus their studies on how to launch and grow a business
venture by enrolling in the entrepreneurship concentration.
Optimize Opportunities
Students in the entrepreneurship concentration learn how to
identify and evaluate opportunities and how to capitalize on
those opportunities. In doing so, they will work closely with
faculty and experienced entrepreneurs to gain hands-on experience
in key activities necessary to build comprehensive business
models and create profitable enterprises.
Course titles include “Starting New Ventures,” “Technology
Commercialization,” and “Small Business Consulting.” A key part
of the concentration is a capstone experience wherein a student
can work directly with a company to help grow their business or
launch a startup of their own.
All that said, it’s not just students concentrating
in entrepreneurship at Culverhouse that get to
have all the business-innovating fun.
The College is also home to the Alabama Entrepreneurship
Institute, which hosts events and manages programs that support
budding and current entrepreneurs both on the UA campus and
also throughout the state.
Win A Competitive EDGE
One of the Institute’s biggest events, the Edward K. Aldag Jr.
Business Pitch Competition, distributes over $100,000 annually
to the best business ideas, which have included teams composed
of students enrolled in non-business programs. Winning teams
also get access to entrepreneur-focused resources such as office
space at The EDGE, which is a business incubator and accelerator
located in the heart of Tuscaloosa operated by the Alabama
Entrepreneurship Institute.
Recent winning companies include outdoor adventure and travel
platform Trips4Trade, which won the $50,000 grand prize in
2019, and test preparation company PrepHQ, which came out on
top for the 2020 edition.
Dr. Theresa Welbourne, executive director of the Alabama
Entrepreneurship Institute, gets excited by the future of entrepreneurship
at the Capstone, “We’re building connections across
campus with other entrepreneurially-minded programs so that
our students get the resources and help they need to launch a
successful business.”
“Last year we piloted the first Crimson Entrepreneurship Academy
for students who have business ideas, went through the
business plan competition, and could benefit from spending the
summer with other like-minded students across campus working
on their businesses full time.”
“This is great training for people who want to start their own
businesses or who want to take that learning and new skills to a
more established firm right after graduation,” she added.
For more info about entrepreneurship programs at Culverhouse,
visit culverhouse.ua.edu.
www.potentialmagazine.com
Fall 2020 | 11