Rider University’s College of Business Administration (CBA) will offer a new entrepreneurial studies major in the fall. Included in the major is an elective, Student Venture Experience, that will allow students to launch their own businesses with the help of an interest-free, short-term loan of up to $5,000.

Dr. Ronald Cook, professor of management and director of Rider’s Small Business Institute® (SBI), and Dr. Radha Chaganti, professor of business policy and environment, will direct the major through the Center for Entrepreneurship in the CBA.

“The mission of the Center will be to help nurture an entrepreneurial spirit among students and encourage them to start their own ventures,” said Dr. Cook. “In doing so, we wanted to offer this major and make it the academic core of the Center.”

The major will consist of six courses drawn from various academic disciplines in the CBA. For example, Dr. Cook said students could double major in another business discipline such as management, marketing, finance, or computer information systems. They could also choose the entrepreneurial studies concentration, which is a four-course program that is paired with a different major.

For the major, students must take small business taxation and small business management. They can then take three electives, choosing from Advanced Business Law, Contracts, Minding Our Business (mentoring of Trenton middle school students learning to start businesses), Business Graphics, Electronic Commerce, Human Resources Management, Management Skills, Retailing Management, Family Business Management, Student Venture Experience or an Independent Study.

Students then select one of the capstone courses to complete the major: New Venture Planning, where they write a business plan for an idea of their choice; or Seminar in Small Business consulting, where high caliber student teams provide confidential consultation and research to area small businesses/organizations (SBI program).

The SBI program has been a nationally award-winning program for many years, as many of the student consulting studies for area small businesses have won first, second or top ten awards in national competition.

“The New Venture Planning course allows students to choose a hypothetical business or a business they are interested in starting after graduation or during their study here,” Dr. Chaganti said. “They prepare a complete business plan through market research, develop a marketing strategy and study a possible location of the business and possible staffing. Once they have completed a business plan, they can participate in Student Venture Experience."

The Student Venture Experience elective is for students interested in launching a venture while they are an undergraduate. They can apply for the $5,000 in seed money from the Seed Venture Fund. The fund requires students to have matching dollars, and each approved business idea could then receive up to $5,000 as a no interest, short-term loan from the Center to help their venture launch.

“We decided to have a loan structure because we want to instill fiscal discipline in the business with the notion that the business should pay for itself,” Dr. Chaganti said. There will be an application process that is reviewed by a panel of area entrepreneurs, who will then make recommendations to the Center.

“During the semester, the students are mentored closely while they launch their venture,” Dr. Cook said. “There are ongoing meetings, and we ask them to compare their progress against what their business plan called for. We will be able to keep track of what they are doing, and how well they can adapt and make changes to their plan.”