Belmont's entrepreneurship program ranked as one of best in the country

Belmont University has ranked in the top 25 schools for its entrepreneurship program.

Entrepreneur magazine and The Princeton Review surveyed 2,300 schools for the ranking. Belmont ranked 23rd in the undergraduate category.

"Belmont made the commitment to create a quality program in entrepreneurship, and I am proud that we have been able to make so much progress in only five years," says Jeff Cornwall, director of Belmont's Center for Entrepreneurship and holder of the Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship. "To be singled out from the hundreds of universities across the country is a testimony to the support we have gotten from the students, alumni, faculty, staff and administration of Belmont and the Nashville business community."

The schools were evaluated on academics, requirements, students and faculty and outside the classroom experience.

"Schools that made the ranking are an excellent research starting point for prospective entrepreneurship students," says Amy Cosper, vice president and editor in chief at Entrepreneur.

The survey results appear in the October issue, which hits newsstands Sept. 23.

Belmont's program also received the National Model Undergraduate Program of the Year by the U.S. Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship earlier this year.

UM Center for Entrepreneurship seeks video pitches for startup proposals

Don’t worry about the white paper. You can make your pitch by vodcast.

Southeast Michigan entrepreneurs and industry experts will serve as judges of “1,000 pitches,” a competition launched last week by the University of Michigan Center for Entrepreneurship.

Contest organizers seek the eponymous 1,000 pitches via streaming video from UM employees or students with a startup proposal for a business or nonprofit organization by Oct. 5.

Proposals should be no more than three minutes long, and will undergo two sets of reviews. First will be a group of student judges and then a set of focus group panels with business-community experts, said Thomas Zurbuchen, professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Center for Entrepreneurship.

Winning pitches in each of seven business categories — environmental, health, technology, local business, global business, social entrepreneurship or “green campus” proposals for UM — receive $1,000 in seed money for their proposals. The Center expects to announce winners in mid-October.

Awards are sponsored by Ann Arbor-based RPM Ventures, MacBeedon Partners L.L.C., and Arboretum Ventures Inc., as well as MPowered Entrepreneurship, the organization for student entrepreneurship at UM.