At Drexel, a new school for entrepreneurs

Robots playing hockey, even driving. Gaming gear that enables 3-D examination of human cells. The world's largest video game. These are part of the creative legacy of Drexel University.

Then there's the experiment headquartered at Suite 402 in Drexel's Leonard Pearlstein Business Learning Center.

"I call this a disruptive innovation in higher education," Donna De Carolis said of the goings-on she leads there.

It's the new Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship, the first such freestanding school in the nation to offer degrees - currently a bachelor's in entrepreneurship and innovation. Plans include adding a master's by fall 2016.

"We want to make sure that entrepreneurship has a broad-based appeal, and it's not seen as just a program in the business school," said Drexel President John Fry.

Considering that, not long ago, entrepreneurship was not deemed scholarly enough, certainly not a career path worth building a curriculum around, it's a remarkable academic evolution.

But as the first Forbes Under 30 Summit held in Philadelphia last week underscored, creating businesses and working for oneself is a career track to which younger generations increasingly aspire. Even toymaker Mattel debuted Entrepreneur Barbie, the 2014 career-of-the-year doll.

"I really do think we've hit on a market that wants this," said De Carolis, founding dean of the Close School.

With its 25-course undergraduate program approved by the faculty senate only in April, 15 students are enrolled this quarter, the Close's first official degree term. (Electives have been offered since summer 2013.) Nine students are pursuing one of the school's four minors.

By contrast, there are 3,600 undergraduate students, 800 graduate students, and 65 doctoral candidates enrolled next door at Drexel's esteemed Bennett S. LeBow College of Business. Yet LeBow's dean, Frank Linnehan, is impressed by Close's progress - and seemingly not put off by the loss of some curriculum and faculty to it.

Rather than a rival, the Close School is a promising source of future LeBow students who otherwise might not have considered taking business courses, Linnehan said.

"This is not going to cannibalize our programs," he said. "It's a great complement."

At Close, the curriculum will not only address the process for starting a business, but also the personal and professional skills needed to do it. Making the new school possible was $12.5 million from the Charles and Barbara Close Foundation in December 2012. Charles Close was a Drexel engineering alum.

"I woke up, and I was the Close School," said De Carolis, 58, of Upper Dublin, a mother of three who noted her own entrepreneurial experience consists of a consulting business she ran for four years "and this one."

That the Close School is independent of LeBow - where De Carolis had been associate dean, creating its first entrepreneurial courses in 2004 - has "raised eyebrows" at conferences, she said.

No surprise to Stephen Spinelli, Jiffy Lube cofounder and president of Philadelphia University, where his push for a more interdisciplinary approach to education resulted in the Kanbar College of Design, Engineering and Commerce shortly after his arrival in 2007.

"Will entrepreneurship be taken seriously as a discipline is always a question," Spinelli said, calling Drexel's school "a noble endeavor."

"The wave of the future" is how Dwight Carey sees it. The assistant professor at Temple University is teaching four entrepreneurial courses, three at the business school and one at the engineering school.

"Across the board, student interest [in entrepreneurship] is really high," Carey said, citing two reasons: post-graduation job offers "no longer there," and students "starting to realize they can start their own business and have an income."

The latter is why Patrick Bowlin, 19, a Drexel sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering, is pursing an entrepreneurship minor at the Close School.

During a break Thursday night in his Launch It! class, where students are given $2,000 in seed money and mentoring to help launch a start-up, Bowlin said a separate entrepreneurship school makes sense because students in all sorts of majors "are going to come up with ideas" for businesses.

"Our generation, we're more innovative," he said.

Or, as mechanical engineering major Mohamed Zerban, 20, put it: "I've always loved business. I've always hated the idea of being a business major."

Starting a business is no DIY undertaking. See Erin Arvedlund's column, "Investing in You," in Live Life Love.

Tyler School of Art's Hatchery nurtures new designers. See Diane Mastrull's column, "Small Business," in Monday's Business section.EndText