UT's Lowth Entrepreneurship Center teaches skills critical for anyone who aspires to be an entrepreneur or think like one. The vision is to create a nationally recognized center for the study of entrepreneurship through continued development of UT’s curriculum, and to conduct leading-edge research in this area.
Through UT’s unique partnership with Moffitt Cancer Center, graduate entrepreneurship students work with physicians to evaluate the feasibility of developing businesses around innovative cancer research and treatment products and services. Students have been instrumental in several new biotech ventures launched by Moffitt scientists and physicians.
Other programs led by the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center include business plan competitions and the Spartan Accelerator, a training initiative to help students and recent alumni grow their technology or Web application businesses.
Where Startups Get Started.
New businesses create the vast majority of net new jobs in industrialized countries, and entrepreneurship is the fastest growing field of study among college students worldwide. The entrepreneurship concentration prepares students for planning, launching, growing and leading a business, with a focus on creativity and innovation.
Students benefit from the Lowth Entrepreneurship Center, which teaches them to see opportunities, prepare an executable business plan and obtain resources to support that plan. The entrepreneurship concentration generally attracts MBA students who have business ideas of their own and want to implement them. The program also serves to develop dynamic business leaders who learn to incorporate innovation and vision into existing companies.
Courses involve real-world interactions with local entrepreneurs and businesses, and students find opportunities to pitch ideas, give investor presentations and compete in a business plan competition. They learn to approach challenges from a creative, problem-solving perspective and develop the hands-on skills and resourceful thinking needed to build successful businesses. MBA graduates with the entrepreneurship concentration may start their own businesses or go on to be corporate entrepreneurs, putting their innovative thinking to work for large organizations. Some choose to follow the paths of venture capital or social entrepreneurship. This popular concentration offers many possibilities.