Working through the entrepreneurship class helped me to construct a business plan that supports both my artistic vision as well as providing me with the structure and knowledge to move forward and succeed. The entrepreneurship grant is helping me make significant gains in making my goals become reality.
Entrepreneurship
Minor
What is entrepreneurship?
Turn an idea into something real and build the customers, the plan, and the case that keep it running.
The entrepreneurship minor at Goshen College teaches you a holistic approach to starting businesses. Every student in this minor builds two foundations. First, how ventures actually get made, how opportunities get spotted, tested, and turned into something workable. Second, how real people decide: what they notice, what they compare, what makes them buy, and what makes them come back. Most people who start a business never study that second question. From there, you shape the rest of the minor around what you’re building to create your very own launchpad. The program is an 18-credit undergraduate minor, open to students in any major.
Why study entrepreneurship at Goshen College?
Most entrepreneurship programs stop at the business plan. At Goshen, students can take on the management of Java Junction, the college’s student-run coffee bar by marketing, purchasing, accounting, staffing and daily operations, with a business faculty member advising. The shop is self-sustaining and open to the whole campus and community, so every decision carries weight. That’s a rare thing to have on a résumé at graduation.
And if you’re serious about building your own venture, faculty will structure coursework around that venture specifically. It isn’t just a lecture you sit through, it will be guidance for students who are actually building something.
What entrepreneurs actually do
- Find the problem. Talk to real people, test whether the need is real, and understand how they currently solve it.
- Understand the customer. Map how someone moves from never having heard of you to choosing you.
- Make the case. Communicate the opportunity clearly to the people whose yes you need: customers, partners, advisors, or a grant committee.
You don’t need a business background to start. You need an idea and the willingness to test it.
Entrepreneurship isn’t a career track you pick instead of your major. It’s a way of working that pairs with what you’re already studying. Majors from all background use it to sell art, ship products and create new ventures.
Madeline Gerig '17
Art Therapist and Co-Founder of Ready Therapy Collective ATR-BC, LCPC
What it costs, and the aid behind it
Scholarships make up a large portion of Goshen financial aid packages, which average almost $26,000 per student, not counting work-study or loans. Enrolled business students may also qualify for endowed awards including the Sauder Scholarship and the Gorsline Scholarship.
To see your own price after aid, run the net price calculator, or explore your options at the financial aid and scholarships pages.
Common questions about the entrepreneurship minor
No. The Entrepreneurship minor is open to students in any major, and it is built on the assumption that most of the people taking it are studying something else. It is 18 credit hours.
Two courses are required:
- BUS 121 Entrepreneurship
- BUS 244 Consumer Behavior and the Customer Journey
18 credit hours: two required three-credit courses, plus four more courses totaling 12 credits.
Four details shape how that actually lands in your schedule:
- At least 8 of the 12 elective credits must be upper level, so most of your four choices need to be 300 or 400 level.
- Two electives are variable credit. BUS 209 Field Experience and BUS 402 Applied Entrepreneurship can each be taken for 1 to 3 credits. If you choose either one, confirm with your advisor that your four courses still add up to 12.
- Two electives have prerequisites. BUS 282 Business Analytics requires BUS 220, COSC 266 or MATH 112 first. BUS 316 Marketing Management requires BUS 244, which the minor already requires, so that one costs you nothing extra.
- BUS 402 needs approval first. You propose an activity to a business faculty member and get it approved before you enroll, so it takes planning ahead rather than a registration slot.
Almost anything, and that is the point. Whatever you are studying, this minor gives you the tools to build a business out of it.
Very little in the coursework is tied to a particular field, so it pairs unusually widely: art, music, film production and broadcasting, communication, computer science and game development, sustainability and agriculture, nursing and the health sciences, social work.
The better test is not your discipline, it is your plan. This minor is for you if you expect to work for yourself or build something: a studio practice, a freelance career, your own clinic, a farm, a nonprofit, a family business you will eventually run, or a product you have not stopped thinking about.
Scholarships make up a large portion of Goshen financial aid packages, which average almost $26,000 per student, not counting work-study or loans. Enrolled business students may also qualify for endowed awards including the Sauder Scholarship and the Gorsline Scholarship. Run the net price calculator to see your own number, then talk it through with a real person in the financial aid office.
Start something, or become the person on a team who can. The minor is built around three outcomes: understanding the roles, goals, methods and tools that entrepreneurial ventures actually run on, identifying opportunities and applying frameworks to make decisions under uncertainty, and communicating well in entrepreneurial settings, which in practice means pitching.
What sets it apart is that you can practice on a real business before you graduate:
- Run the campus coffee shop. BUS 360 Java Junction Operations puts you inside Java Junction in the KMY Connector, which is entirely student-run and student-managed. Students hold full responsibility for management and operating decisions, supervised by a business faculty member, and report to an Advisory Board that acts as its board of directors.
- Bring your own venture for credit. BUS 402 Applied Entrepreneurship lets you propose your own project and earn academic credit for the work.
- Get a field experience you would not otherwise qualify for. BUS 209 Field Experience is limited to accounting, business, information technology and marketing majors and minors, plus entrepreneurship minors. Declaring this minor is what makes you eligible, once you have finished at least 6 hours of program requirements.
Patrick Farran
Associate Professor of Business
Alysha Liljeqvist
Associate Professor of Business
Andrew Hartzler
Professor of Accounting
Eyob Zeleke
Assistant Professor of Information Technology
Michelle Horning
Professor of Accounting
Program Director
Department ChairJorge Montenegro Martinez
Assistant Professor of Business
Jason Harrison
Assistant Professor of Business
Jerrell Richer
Professor of Economics
Carl Kreider Chair and Co-Director of Global Engagement
