Entrepreneurship Program
Why study Entrepreneurship?
Whether you see yourself starting your own business or finding a great career, the Entrepreneurship program will give you the skills and knowledge you need to make your mark. Saint Mary’s provides an exciting opportunity for you to run your own business while attending university — a unique and gratifying experience.
The Saint Mary’s approach
If you have a creative and adventurous spirit and like the idea of being your own boss, Entrepreneurship may be for you. An entrepreneurial mindset can help you embark on a variety of career paths. Our professors combine entrepreneurial experience with academic qualifications, exposing you to the newest methods of practice and theory.
Entrepreneurship is offered as a major in the Commerce and Arts programs. A co-op option is also available.
Hands-on opportunities
There are many opportunities to take classroom learning to the next level by getting direct business experience that will help you succeed. Take part in workshops, events and competitions on campus and through the Arthur L. Irving Entrepreneurship Centre at Saint Mary's. Compete in business competitions and learn how to create and grow your own business. Our Entrepreneurship Centre gives students the advice, tools and support they need to create sustainable full or part-time businesses. You can also participate in Enactus, an international network of student entrepreneurs. You can also participate in Enactus, an international network of student entrepreneurs.
Sample courses offered:
- Sustainable Entrepreneurship: This course focuses on the role of entrepreneurship in tackling sustainability challenges. You will learn concepts of social value, co-creation, responsible innovation, and social crowdfunding. Students will understand the determinants and forces shaping sustainable entrepreneurship and identify sustainability challenges, and potential solutions via the implementation of sustainable business models.
- Build and Launch: Entrepreneurial students experience the lean start-up methodology, validating new products and business models using the principles of customer discovery. Student founders explore, create, and test minimum viable products to launch, sell and manage successful enterprises. Through active learning techniques, students are immersed in building innovations with similarly minded entrepreneurs.
- Family Business: Topics include: income versus inheritance, management and promotion, bringing non-family resources to the firm, harvest and sell out strategies, succession, deciding to join the family firm, establishing credibility as a daughter or son, stages of family business growth. The course also explores organizational creativity and how innovation is developed and carried out in family business, and the innovation drivers and barriers in family business.
- Venture Capital: Venture Capital is designed to finance rapid-growth, scalable start-ups. Students explore risk-laden investments in entrepreneurial and innovative firms. Students investigate value propositions, financing, and venture teams of clean tech, life sciences, and ICT start-ups. Students practice authoring investment memos. Lectures are supplemented with visits by guest VCs, entrepreneurs, and local living cases.
Career opportunities:
- Entrepreneur
- Investor
- Tech start-up founder
- Not-for-profit leader
- Industry analyst lobbyist
- Management consultant
- Firm manager
“The most exciting part of the Entrepreneurship Major at Saint Mary’s is that you don’t have to be in Commerce. You can be in Arts, too. This is the only university in Canada that provides such an opportunity.”
Ellen Farrell, Professor in Entrepreneurship and Venture Development