Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

February 13, 2004

Entrepreneurship is focus of newest learning community

by Kevin Brown
Iowa State's newest learning community will target students who have either considered starting a business or may already be running one. Up to 35 would-be entrepreneurs will join the Entrepreneur and Innovation Learning Community, to be housed on the fifth floor of a remodeled Buchanan Hall beginning this fall.

"Residents in the learning community will have unique opportunities to take entrepreneur-ship courses and participate in a variety of learning and mentoring experiences to help them understand entrepreneurship and launch their own businesses," said Judi Eyles, director of programs and marketing for ISU's Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship.

Eyles said the idea for the learning community came from President Gregory Geoffroy, who had worked with a similar program at the University of Maryland, College Park.

"Entrepreneurship is one of the fastest-growing parts of Iowa State's learning environment, with innovative programs in curriculum, student activities and outreach," Geoffroy said. "I want Iowa State to be the place that high school students in the Midwest come to study entrepreneurship."

Learning community members take courses together and may live together (or near each other) in the same residence hall. Learning communities at Iowa State were started in 1995. Today, there are more than 50 ISU learning communities, and 43 percent of entering first-year students participate.

The entrepreneurship learning community could offer great potential for cross-disciplinary benefit, Eyles said. Students majoring in chemistry, marketing, engineering and other disciplines will live together and network on ideas for new businesses.

"This will be a rich environment of business-focused students, all with the desire and goal of creating their own product -- but coming at those shared goals with the experiences gained in each of their individual colleges and programs," Eyles said.

Students interested in living in the learning community must complete an application and attend an interview. More information is online at http://www.isupjcenter.org/ELC.

Iowa State's learning communities program is ranked among the top five in the country by US News and World Report (2003). One-year retention, on average, is 8 percent higher for learning community students at ISU. Two- and three-year retention rates, on average, are 12 percent higher for learning community students. Four-year graduation rates have been 14 percent higher, on average, for these students.