Name: Chris Alvarez

Year: 2014

Hometown: Chelmsford, MA

Major: Neuroscience

Minor: Entrepreneurship and Management

Entrepreneurship at JHU

         I, like many students entering JHU, have always been interested in the sciences.  My early exposure to neurochemistry in high school drove my fascination with the brain and various aspects of neuroscience.  Although I was always confident in my decision to become a neuroscience major, I had never seriously considered minoring in anything business related.  It was not until the second semester of my freshman year, after taking the course Introduction to Business in order to complete my distribution requirements, that I contemplated minoring in Entrepreneurship and Management (E&M).

            One aspect of the Entrepreneurship and Management minor that cannot go unmentioned is the strength of the faculty. In addition to their real-world knowledge of the field, E&M professors are extremely student oriented. Whether you have a question concerning a business case brought up in class, a recent news event, or a business idea, E&M professors are always more than willing to spend large amounts of time to answer questions.

            In addition to a great selection of courses and professors, JHU is also a great place for business and entrepreneurship extracurricular activities. It was during this same semester that my business partner, Ian Han ’14, and I started our first business venture, The Blue Jay Cleaners (http://www.thebluejaycleaners.com).

As the name suggests, The Blue Jay Cleaners is a dormitory and apartment janitorial service catered towards serving the Johns Hopkins community.  Although The Blue Jay Cleaners began as a Maryland state business, we have since merged with the university by joining Hopkins Student Enterprises.  Hopkins Student Enterprises, or HSE, is a non-profit umbrella organization that assists student entrepreneurs as they grow their businesses on campus.  Being part of the Center for Leadership Education, which houses the Entrepreneurship and Management Minor, HSE offers unparalleled guidance and opportunities for those students who embrace entrepreneurship.  In addition to weekly meetings with HSE faculty advisors and the managers of the other ventures that make up HSE, all CLE professors of eager to answer any questions one might have.  HSE also allows ventures to have full advertising rights on campus and other advantages in order to fully allow each business to become integrated into the JHU community.  One wonderful aspect of HSE is that it truly allows student entrepreneurs to manage their own business and make their own decisions, while offering support when support is needed. In addition to The Blue Jay Cleaners, I also manage Hopkins Student Creative Services (http://web1.johnshopkins.edu/hse/hcs/), a web development and design venture.  My current goal is to improve name recognition for HSCS on campus in addition to the Baltimore community in order to increase the amount of clients served.

Another great entrepreneurial extracurricular activity is the JHU chapter of the Kairos Society (http://www.kairossociety.org/). The Kairos society is an international entrepreneurship society dedicated to solve the world’s greatest challenges in order to ensure a better future through domestic and international collaboration.  This past year I traveled with members of the JHU Kairos Society Chapter to both the White House and the New York Stock Exchange to discuss ways to solve world issues including healthcare, education, and the environment. It is truly amazing to be surrounded by hundreds of individuals from different countries around the world, all focused on the same goal.

JHU is an amazing place when it comes to fostering both business and entrepreneurship on campus. No matter what your major, I encourage you to take a few classes in the Entrepreneurship and Management minor or attend a few extracurricular events in the Center for Leadership Education.  You, as I was in my freshman year, will be truly excited by both the business and entrepreneurial opportunities provided by JHU.

Click here to access more information about the Entrepreneurship and Management Undergraduate Program of Study.

To further your exploration of this academic program and ask any question you may have of current students, be sure to visit the Hopkins Forums’ Academics: The Insider Perspective and the Entrepreneurship and Management question thread.

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Name: Andrew Solinger

Year: Class of 2009

Hometown: Oakland, CA

Major: Political Science

Minor: Entrepreneurship and Management

BUSINESS-ESQUE

I was asked to write an entry about my minor, the illustrious WP Carey Minor in Entrepreneurship and Management (or E&M for short) program which is part of The Center for Leadership Education. Many people associate Johns Hopkins University with science and engineering – however, the most popular minor in the school is the minor in entrepreneurship and management. Through my three and a half years here at Hopkins I have been fortunate enough to take seven classes within the program. After taking my first two classes my freshman year, I just assumed that I would declare this minor – I was hooked and I could not be happier with my decision to continue in the program.

Being a political science major who is interested in both business as well as politics and law, the entrepreneurship and management minor was a perfect place for me to be able to pursue those areas of study while also taking other classes that would be sure to help me down the road in school and even more so after graduation. Since my freshman year the requirements for the minor have changed and now allow for even more leeway in choosing which classes to take in order to fulfill the requirements while also adding an extra quantitative requirement to the program. There are a number of categories of classes that must be completed in order to declare the minor. Here are the program requirements and how I chose to fulfill them:

•    Students are required to take calculus along with a combination of one or two other quantitative courses in statistics. I was able to use my AP credits from statistics in order to fulfill one of those requirements so I was only required to take calculus I along with another statistics class, for which I chose to take Probability and Statistics.
•    The second category that must be fulfilled entails taking three classes in business and finance. Being able to choose from a litany of classes in applied mathematics, economics, mechanical  engineering, geography and environmental engineering, as well as nearly twenty courses offered in the E&M program, it was not difficult to find three that looked interesting for me to take. I fulfilled this requirement by taking Introduction to Business, Business Law I, Principles of Marketing, Law and the Internet, and Advertising and Promotion. I took two more classes than is required because I was extremely interested in the Law and the Internet class as I decide on whether to continue with my studies in law and weight the possibility of applying to law schools and because the professor that taught my marketing classes was teaching Advertising and Promotion and recommended that I take it as a natural progression from her marketing classes.
•    The third category is leadership and organizational behavior, for which you are required to take at least one class. I took two classes in this section, Case Studies in Business Ethics as well as Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, both of which I am sure will apply extensively to my experiences upon graduation and securing a job.
•    The fourth category is either operations management or international trade, for which you are  required to take one class in either category. I chose to take International Marketing which is part of the international trade section in order to complete this requirement, my third class with that particular professor who taught my Principles of Marketing, International Marketing, and Advertising and Promotion classes, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

One of the unique reasons why this program is so popular amongst students from all majors and areas of interest is because the variety of classes is diverse and the professors are exceptionally connected to their area of study as the majority of them work full-time and teach here only part-time, leaving them the opportunity to explain how cases studied in class or topics discussed in the seminars can actually apply to real life business or legal decisions. The professor who teaches Introduction to Business, Lawrence Aronhime, is one of the most highly-regarded professors in the school partly because he is able to take concepts discussed in readings and lectures and explain how they relate to a real decision that he had to make in one of his businesses that he runs. That type of context is not applicable only to business classes as I have had opportunities to take a Business Law class with a professor who is an administrative judge for the State of Maryland.

I have had a number of classes as part of my minor that were not typical college courses. The first that comes to mind is my Advertising and Promotion course. This course  was run as if the class was a professional advertising agency. We created a number of departments, department managers, and the agency director in order to properly function as a true agency. Our class secured a real client who was hoping to take a new product that they had developed and bring it from the development stage to being launched on the market with our help. We were given a budget to run an advertising campaign complete with multimedia advertisements, a marketing event, as well as other aspects that were required for a successful campaign. At the end of the semester we presented our campaign and results to the company for which we were working and received feedback from them regarding how we had done. It was extremely interesting to take part in such a class as it taught extensive real lessons for making business decisions as well as working in a professional environment with my peers.

Another important aspect to the entrepreneurship and management minor is the ability for students to partake in internships or part-time jobs outside of the school setting and get credits for them. The Center for Leadership Education and the office for the entrepreneurship and management minor have the ability to work hand-in-hand with students in securing them internships at companies here in Baltimore, in Washington, DC, or elsewhere in the United States so that students can gain practical knowledge of the field while also perhaps getting college credit for their internships. Through professors in the program along with the vast alumni base of Johns Hopkins University, they are able to work with students to find opportunities in their particular field of interest.

Perhaps what drove me most to taking classes in the program my freshman year was the wide variety of courses offered and the ability for many of the courses to be applied to literally any field of study or profession once I graduate. I have classmates in these classes that are biomedical engineers who are taking classes in law and marketing so that they can better understand the legal and business contexts for their research. There are other students who are economics majors hoping to enter the financial sector upon graduation who are taking classes in financial accounting, econometrics, and management so that they can better understand the underlying aspects for a successful business. Being that the courses offered are so broad students from any department or major can be certain to find classes in the entrepreneurship and management minor that are not only interesting but also applicable to their other courses along with their career aspirations.

Click here to access more information about the Entrepreneurship and Management Undergraduate Program of Study.

To further your exploration of this academic program and ask any question you may have of current students, be sure to visit the Hopkins Forums’ Academics: The Insider Perspective and the Entrepreneurship and Management question thread.

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