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Northwestern University

Undergraduate Minor

The Undergraduate Minor in Entrepreneurship is designed for students who are interested in pursuing a practical education in how to start a business or how to make innovation a cornerstone of their career paths. The minor is open to all undergraduate students at Northwestern.

The undergraduate minor requires 8 courses, which includes 5 core courses and 3 electives. No more than 3 courses may be double-counted toward a student’s major program. Courses with a grade lower than “C-” (C minus) cannot be applied to the minor.

Students must declare the minor at least one year prior to their expected graduation date.

Interested in pursuing our Undergraduate Minor in Entrepreneurship?

The first step is to review the required coursework outlined below. You can also set up a meeting with a Farley Center student ambassador to learn more about the program and ask questions. If you have a question that cannot be answered by an ambassador, feel free to email us at farley@northwestern.edu. When you are ready to declare, please log into the McCormick Advising System (MAS) with your NetID and password to submit an electronic declaration form; you will use this system to declare the minor and manage your plan of study, even if you are not a McCormick student.

Core Courses

To ensure a broad exposure to key entrepreneurial concepts, minor candidates must take one core class in each of the five following areas:  

*Note that special topics courses labeled ENTREP 395 are offered periodically. For current course offerings, please see the Farley Course Schedule. 

**These courses are not currently offered by the Farley Center, but can still be counted toward the entrepreneurship minor if they were completed prior. Contact farley@northwestern.edu with questions.

Electives

To supplement the five core courses, students must select three electives from the following:

  • Any Farley Center course
  • EFFECTIVE APRIL 1, 2023: The following pre-approved coursework from other schools and programs on campus. Any outside coursework to be applied to the minor must be approved by the Farley Center in advance and must be in compliance with double-counting rules. Students may petition courses not on this list in MAS. Please write to farley@northwestern.edu with questions.
    • BUS_INST 301 Accounting
    • BUS_INST 302 Marketing Management
    • BUS_INST 303 Leadership In Organizations
    • BUS_INST 321 Business and Economic Institutions in Historical Perspective
    • COMM_ST 302 Law of The Creative Process
    • COMM_ST 363 Bargaining and Negotiation
    • DSGN 305 Human-Centered Service Design
    • DSGN 308 Human-Centered Product Design
    • DSGN 350 Intellectual Property and Innovation
    • DSGN 382 Service Design Studio I & II
    • DSGN 384 Interdisciplinary Product Design Projects I & II
    • JOUR 319 Entrepreneurial Approaches to Media Innovation
    • LDRSHP 304 Leading from Design
    • LOC 312 Modern Organization and Innovations

For Chicago Field Studies (CFS) coursework, students who intern at startups may petition to apply up to three credits towards the entrepreneurship minor requirements. Please submit a written summary, co-signed by a supervisor from the startup team, explaining how you were involved in multiple, significant aspects of the startup. CFS credits can be applied to entrepreneurship minor electives requirements. One credit may be applied to the core experiential requirement if the student’s CFS experience involved taking an active part in a startup’s strategy and customer discovery.

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