Business schools at Iowa universities have noticed a push toward entrepreneurship.

A growing number of students, officials say, are taking minors, certificate programs or single classes in entrepreneurial practices, which has led the schools to expand classes and programs in that area.

“Students are entrepreneurial. They’re creative,” said Michael Crum, dean of the College of Business at Iowa State University. “They’re looking out there for more than just landing the job with the big, established, well-known company. They’re looking at starting their own enterprise. And that’s encouraging. It’s hard to keep up with the demand for those courses.”

Iowa State University started offering an entrepreneurial practices-based minor in 1997, and Crum said that in the past five or six years, about 70 students have pursued the minor at any given time. Close to 300 students enroll in the school’s introductory entrepreneurship course each year.

Iowa State is not alone. Each of the three state schools and Drake University have put an emphasis on entrepreneurial programs in the past 10 years.

“I think some students – and I think it’s a function of the generation – want to be their own boss more than when I was in school in the 1980s,” said Lon Moeller, associate dean for undergraduate programs in the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa.

The University of Iowa enrolled 1,883 students in its entrepreneurial certificate program last spring.

Drake University’s College of Business and Public Administration began offering an entrepreneurship major in fall 2006, and enrolled eight students that semester. The program has 43 enrolled for the upcoming fall semester, and opened an entrepreneurial minor geared toward non-business students last fall.

The University of Northern Iowa has had 48 students complete its certificate of entrepreneurship, and has had more than 1,000 students participate in entrepreneur-related activities at the school, including the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center business incubator on campus.

Part of the impetus for the additional emphasis on entrepreneurial classes and programs stems from the Pappajohn centers, which exist at each of the four universities. Another reason is the recent economic uncertainty, which has some students wondering if they want to be part of an existing corporation.

Another large factor is that today’s students want to be more well-rounded, university officials say. That attitude transcends entrepreneurs; for example, Drake encourages students to enroll in multiple majors within and outside the business school, and many University of Iowa students have double majors within the College of Business.

“Students are pretty wise to the fact that you’ve got to be pretty well-rounded to be competitive in a job market these days,” Moeller said.

That attitude is evident in students who choose to take on entrepreneurial studies, shown by the fact that many who take the classes come from outside the business school.

At Drake, for example, many pharmacy students also study entrepreneurship, said Charles Edwards, dean of the College of Business and Public Administration. Similarly, Edwards, who is also the dean of Drake’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, encourages journalism students to gain an understanding of business concepts, how to create a business plan and how to seek funding – skills that could well be necessary in a changing journalism world.

From a university-wide perspective, “we also have people who are taking minors and concentrations in business, because they feel like they need an exposure to business before they graduate, because they’re going to be confronted with having to run a business of one type or another when they graduate,” Edwards said.

Even those who don’t necessarily want to be entrepreneurs find the classes and programs useful, the University of Iowa’s Moeller said. It can give students a more well-rounded curriculum, and in Iowa’s case, many of the professors have run businesses themselves and can provide real-world examples.

“Entrepreneurship is kind of a neat thing to tie all the business concepts into one so students can see all aspects of a business relate to each other,” Moeller said. “And a lot of big companies want that entrepreneur mindset as well. So I think students, even if they are going to go to a Rockwell Collins (Inc.), like to have that flavor about what it means to be an entrepreneur.”