Entrepreneurial Studies

If you dream of your own business, you’re already thinking like an entrepreneur.

What you need is experience in what it takes to create, run and grow your own business. That’s what Augustana’s experiential minor in entrepreneurial studies will do for you.

What makes this minor experiential is the hands-on part of the curriculum. You’ll have two options: 
• complete an internship at an entrepreneurial firm or an organization in its early, formative stage, or
• create an in-depth business plan, supervised by the director of Augustana’s EDGE Center.

What is the EDGE Center? EDGE stands for Entrepreneurial Development through Guided Experiences. The center is a hub of entrepreneurial activity centrally located in the Olin Center, where students of all majors (many with the entrepreneurial studies minor) work on assets needed by local organizations to better communicate, manage or market their businesses or not-for-profit.

Many Augustana alumni say their EDGE Center experiences—and the portfolios they created—stood out on applications and set them on their distinctive career paths. Students with minors in entrepreneurial studies receive a formal certificate of their competence in entrepreneurship.

Distinctions

• Supervised by EDGE Center staff, students in the EDGE Center complete a wide range of projects, including web development, design and photography, video editing, strategic marketing plans, social media management and marketing, event planning, media relations and more.

• EDGE Center staff also provide students expert help in developing their personal business plans. Many students submit their business plans to the annual $10,000 Augustana Business Plan Competition, in which the five best plans are chosen by a panel of business professionals to compete for monetary awards.

• The Augustana Creative Enterprise Fund (ACEF) funds the annual business plan competition and also provides grants to students interested in entrepreneurial ventures such as business and social entrepreneurship, education, sustainable community programming, and more. Students who can link music education or the arts to their proposal are especially encouraged to apply.

• Advertising Developers (ADs) and the Augustana Web Guild are two student groups of special interest for entrepreneurial studies minors.

• The purpose of the Enactus student group is to come up with creative, new entrepreneurial ideas that will better the community. Students come up with new ideas as a team and have the chance to make those ideas become reality through the resources Enactus provides.

Recent graduates

Alexa Pedersen ’20 is a partnerships specialist at Too Good To Go in Chicago.

Liem Gearen ’19 is a software engineer with John Deere in Davenport, Iowa.

Alyssa Mish ’19 is a program specialist with Creative Group, Inc.

Kris Kizer '18 is a senior associate, client leadership, at Kantar in Chicago.

Andrew Kladiva ’18 is a territory aftermarket business manager at John Deere in Manchester, N.H.