October 04, 2000

Entrepreneurship can be the spirit a person is born with or it can even be taught, says Don Brezinski, director for undergraduate career development at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass.

Babson boasts a four-year program that weaves entrepreneurship into each class and project. From their freshman year on, Babson students are exposed to every facet of what it's like to run a business, says Sandy Siciliano, who is the coordinator of undergraduate administration at Babson.

Groups of 30 students form businesses. Throughout the first semester they do presentations, feasibility studies and vote on what type of business to run. Smaller groups within the 30 come up with ideas, and then the whole group votes on the business, Siciliano says.

"The students do a request for funding to be approved or denied by the faculty. They have to justify what they need for start-up costs. The college then loans the groups money, up to $3,000," Siciliano says. "The loan has to be paid back at the end of the semester, with interest. Part of the learning experience is [that] the whole business has to experience paying back the loan."

"The business itself eventually takes a back seat to the many inclusive learning experiences," says Kevin Colleran, a Babson sophomore who runs several businesses, such as Web sites and an Internet consulting firm under the holding company KevColl Enterprises LLC.

"I applied many of the techniques I was taught in the classroom to my workings with CreakyJoints," says Seth Ginsberg, a Babson sophomore who has launched CreakyJoints.com, a Web site for fellow arthritis sufferers. "Many things like managerial responsibilities, financial ratios and other accounting methods were and still are readily applied."

Babson also supports a business hatchery, where students and alumni may apply for space and equipment to launch and support their business ventures. "They are given a pretty long leash. The faculty and the administrators just make sure they are not doing anything illegal or not misspending the money, but we let them make their mistakes," says Rob Major, associate director of Babson's undergraduate foundation program. "Their business proposal has to be sound, but once they get their funding, they're pretty much off to the races." - Kim Fulcher Linkins

Back To KevColl Page