CORTLAND — A new course in entrepreneurship at the State University of New York Cortland (SUNY) aims to give students the tools they need to develop their own business ventures. The course began this fall with 28 students. “I think it’s long overdue,” says Brian Ward, who has been teaching at SUNY Cortland for 10 […]
CORTLAND — A new course in entrepreneurship at the State University of New York Cortland (SUNY) aims to give students the tools they need to develop their own business ventures.
The course began this fall with 28 students.
“I think it’s long overdue,” says Brian Ward, who has been teaching at SUNY Cortland for 10 years and is the instructor for the entrepreneurship class. “To have a program that focuses on such a major part of the economy is critically important.”
Small businesses form a key piece of the nation’s job landscape, he notes.
During the fall semester, students are researching local establishments to determine their business needs and interests, according to the university. Ward says groups of students have already formed around six different projects.
The course was designed in two parts. The next, which would take place in the spring, is aimed at further developing the business ideas and determining if they’re viable.
Even if the ideas don’t turn out as students would hope, they will have learned the process, Ward contends. That includes tasks like developing a business plan, marketing strategy, financing, and conducting market research.
“Even if something doesn’t come out of it, you’ll have a group of students that are knowledgeable and educated about how to go about this,” says Ward, who is also president of Cortland Line Co., a manufacturer of fly-fishing equipment.
He says that plenty of people who try to start a business get hung up along the way. It could be a permitting or licensing issue or poor research on potential competitors.
The idea of the course at SUNY Cortland is to educate students on how to navigate those challenges.
“A lot of people, I think, get blocked at some point,” Ward says. “They start something and then run into a problem and don’t know how to get around it.”
Already, some of the groups of students in the fall course have modified their ideas based on what they’ve learned in their research, he says.
The long-term goal for the students is to pitch their concepts to venture capitalists or angel investors. That would take place during the spring-semester course, according to the university.
“It’s kind of a twofold thing,” Kathleen Burke, an associate professor of economics who is helping coordinate and develop the course, said in a news release. “On the academic side, we’ll have our students trying to develop their own business ideas using the know-how of successful local businesses and people in the community.
“Then, within the community, we’ll use the talents of our students to assist small, growing businesses.”
Ward says he’s bringing in mentors for the students from throughout the local business community. He’s setting up the students
with experts who are aligned with their ideas.
SUNY Cortland is also reaching out to other universities with entrepreneurship courses and incubators to gather ideas about how to expand and improve the course in the future, Ward says.
The university has a total enrollment of more than 7,300 students with more than 6,300 undergraduates and nearly 1,000 graduate students. The school has more than 600 faculty members and offers 61 undergraduate and 33 graduate-level majors.