Belmont Entrepreneurship Program Gains National Top-10 Ranking

Belmont University is nationally ranked as one of the top ten schools with an Emphasis in Entrepreneurship by Entrepreneur magazine in the May 2004 issue. Belmont’s program is the only Top-10 ranked university entrepreneurship program in Tennessee.
“Belmont made the commitment to create a quality program in entrepreneurship and I am proud that we have been able to make so much progress in just our first year,” said Dr. Jeff Cornwall, director of Belmont’s Center for Entrepreneurship and holder of the Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship. “To be singled out from the hundreds of universities across the country is a testimony to the support we have gotten from the students, faculty, staff and administration of Belmont and the Nashville business community.”

Entrepreneur magazine ranked universities in three categories. The Emphasis in Entrepreneurship category is the middle category and features programs that offer either an entrepreneurship major or the ability for students to emphasize entrepreneurship within a business or economics major. The category includes programs that may only be for undergraduates, or limited on the graduate or undergraduate level, and may not have a Center or research institute, or an incubator or other business outreach initiatives.
Belmont’s program is one of the most comprehensive programs in the nation in this category, offering both an undergraduate major in entrepreneurship graduate-level classes in entrepreneurship. In addition, the university’s Center for Entrepreneurship operates a Student Business Hatchery, an Office of Women’s Programs, on-campus retail space for student-operated businesses, community-focused educational programs, and an annual scholarship award, sponsored by Union Planters Bank, for the Outstanding Belmont Student Entrepreneur.
Some of the university programs ranked as “second tier” or below in the Entrepreneurship Emphasis category: East Tennessee State University, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Arizona State University, Pepperdine University, the University of Oklahoma, and Western Kentucky University.