Marquette has joined a growing trend of interdisciplinary entrepreneurship with the introduction of its new Cross-Campus Entrepreneurship Initiative.

The focus of the initiative is to give students at the undergraduate level the opportunity to gain valuable experience in the field of innovation, according to Tim Keane, the director of the Kohler Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Business Administration.

Keane said the initiative will aid students who oftentimes have good business ideas but don't know how to implement them.

Keane said planning for this initiative started last January, with a $25,000 planning grant from the Helen Bader Foundation, a Milwaukee-based organization that supports programs related to health, economics and education. This allowed a small faculty committee to travel to other universities and observe their efforts in promoting entrepreneurship among their students, Keane said.

Although this type of interdisciplinary approach to entrepreneurship is new to college campuses within the past five years, Keane said Marquette is no stranger to having alumni entrepreneurs from a variety of fields. Keane's examples included Bill Diederich, a College of Communication alumnus who founded the Weather Channel.

Central to the initiative is Entrepreneurship 159, a class open only to non-business majors. Keane teaches the course and said he approaches the curriculum with an understanding that his students don't have a business background.

"I think this class is great for students who have career plans that involve any sort of self-employment management," Keane said, referring to careers in fields such as health sciences, law and performing arts. "I don't want to speak for my students, but I think they're getting a lot out of it."

Keane said students have to create a model business on paper throughout the semester. Students also do case studies of operating businesses to learn from their successes and failures.

Two students in Keane's class, Anna Brostowitz, a junior in the College of Health Sciences, and Katie Dorman, a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences, said they agreed the class is great preparation for the "real world."

Brostowitz, a pre-dentistry major, said it was watching her father, also a dentist, struggling to run his practice without any basic business skills that inspired her to sign up for the course.

"I've never done anything business related," she said. "But I want to make sure I have those basic skills such as bill-paying and finance management before I leave school."

Dorman, a philosophy and economics major, said while owning her own business is not her ultimate goal, the analytical thinking skills she has learned in the class will help her in any future career.

"This is not your typical academic course," Dorman said. "The way the course is packaged, its skills are going to help you whoever you are and whatever you decide to do."

However, Brostowitz and Dorman said this is definitely one of the most difficult courses they have ever taken. The course revolves around several large, long-term assignments, including building the business model and interviewing an actual entrepreneur.

"This class isn't hard in a 'I need tutoring' type of way," Dorman said. "It's just a very challenging mindset, and a whole new way of thinking."

Keane said the course is being offered for the first time this fall, and will be offered again in the fall semester next year. Both Brostowitz and Dorman said they enthusiastically recommend it, and that they credit much of the course's success to Keane's instruction.

"I feel really privileged to be a part of this experience," Brostowitz said. "It's hard work, but it's knowledge that is going to last. I don't think I'm going to take the final and forget it."