MUNCIE, Ind. - Ball State University’s challenging entrepreneurship program recently took top honors at a national conference.

The Entrepreneurship Program earned the 2001 National Model Innovative Pedagogy Award for Entrepreneurship, sponsored by the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship at its recent national conference Feb. 7-10 in Orlando, Fla.

The association is a non-profit organization devoted to continuing management education for entrepreneurs and small business.

The award is given to university entrepreneurship programs exhibiting outstanding innovative teaching methods which can be featured as a model for other institutions. The winning program must qualify in five distinct areas: quality, rigor, sustainability, transferability and innovativeness.

“Ball State’s entrepreneurship program is extremely challenging and is intended only for students who are very serious about and focused on a degree in entrepreneurship,” said Donald F. Kuratko, the Stoops Distinguished Professor of Business and founding director of Ball State’s entrepreneurship program.

The 2001 finalists included the University of Kansas, University of Missouri-Kansas City and George Washington University. Representatives of each program made presentations to a panel of national judges.

Ball State’s program is one of the most innovative and rigorous experiences ever devised for the study of entrepreneurship, according to the judges.

In the program’s final course, described by Kuratko as “the ultimate spine sweating experience,” each student is required to develop a business plan. When the plans are finished, usually just a few days before graduation, students give a 90-minute presentation to business experts in Indianapolis.

After an intense questioning session, the board then decides whether or not the plan is feasible. If the plan is approved, the student passes the class and graduates as planned. Failing means repeating the course the following spring.

“To up the ante a bit, we decided that there would be no summer school makeup,” Kuratko said. “They have to wait until the following January to re-enroll in the course. This makes students risk graduation day and a year of their career because they will sit out with no degree. This course definitely makes the students' spines sweat.”

About 30 to 35 students take the final course each spring with 78 percent passing and 22 percent failing. Since the program's inception in 1983, there has never been a 100 percent success rate.

The association honored Ball State University twice before with the National Model Entrepreneurship Program Award for the undergraduate program in 1991 and for the graduate level in 1998. The entrepreneurship program is ranked in Business Week’s Top 20, Success magazine’s Top 20, and U.S. News & World Report’s Elite Top 5 Entrepreneurship Programs.

By Marc Ransford, Communications Manager

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact Kuratko by e-mail at dkuratko@bsu.edu or by phone at (765) 285-5327.)