L. William Crotty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership

Students with a major or minor in entrepreneurship will develop an understanding of how a business enterprise is conceived, launched, and sustained. Our curriculum teaches students how to identify viable business opportunities and explores how such opportunities are transformed into new ventures. Additionally, emphasis is placed on how entrepreneurial ventures successfully compete for financial resources, identify and reach their target market, and establish business processes, systems, and controls to manage small and growth-oriented ventures.

With our undergraduate program being nationally ranked in America, entrepreneurship is the fastest-growing major at the University of Dayton School of Business Administration. It is also our most selective major for entrance. We do not accept all who apply for the entrepreneurship major, however, the entrepreneurship minor is open to all UD undergraduates who apply.

One of the distinctions of the program is the micro-company experience where student teams create and operate micro-businesses funded by the University.

The micro-company course, taken during the sophomore year, begins with each student pitching an idea to the class. The students in the class evaluate the ideas and choose the ones they like. Those who pitched the top ideas become team founders. The next step is a career day where founders recruit other students to their team based on the skill set they will need to successfully launch their business. Each team then gets a $5,000 investment from the University, and they move to launch their microcompany. The experience lasts for a full academic year, and students are encouraged to continue their company after the course ends. At the end of the year, the students pay back the original investment and spilt the profits among the team's members and a social venture of their choice. By the end of their first year in the program, students will have built a diverse team, launched a company and repaid an investor.

Examples of past micro-businesses include wall tapestries, spirit clothing apparel, folding chairs, coffee mugs, Christmas ornaments, rehabilitation of a 112-year-old home near campus, and even a one-pound gummy bear. This experience is delivered through the Crotty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

To date, over 200 micro-companies have been created, successfully run, and harvested.

Another key benefit of the program is the capstone course senior seminar in entrepreneurship, in which students work as consultants to local emerging companies, solving strategic or operational issues under the supervision of a course professor and recently retired local entrepreneurs who serve as mentors to each consulting team.

Have a great idea? Pitch it during the annual Flyer Pitch competition, which awards more than $100,000 in cash and $50,000 in in-kind prizes. More than 70 new ventures, with over $24 million in follow-on capital, have been launched as a result of the competition.

The UD Real Estate Competition is open to all current UD students regardless of major/discipline. This competition offers students interested in real estate development to dive into the world of senior living communities and conduct a feasibility analysis to win up to $7,500. A final pitch competition will be held to determine which team(s) offers the most robust analysis and most insightful recommendations. Judges will distribute $15,000 in cash prizes to winning teams with the potential for additional funding for follow-on projects.

Go from barista to CEO before you graduate. With more than 200 student employees and $2.1 in annual revenue, Flyer Enterprises is one of the largest student-run businesses in the nation.

From nonprofits in Ireland to microlending in Kenya, students in Flyer Consulting provide complimentary business consulting to nonprofits around the world.

Thanks to a generous gift from alumnus Ron McDaniel, Flyer Angels is a $1 million early-stage fund that invests in some of Ohio's most exciting technology ventures. Entrepreneurship majors perform all due diligence, make investment decisions and interact with angel investors. Ours is one of the few entrepreneurship programs that directly involves undergraduates in angel investing.

The Stitt Scholars Program provides students with experiential learning opportunities (paid internships) through deep collaboration with clients from the Dayton community. Stitt Scholars gain and enhance their problem-solving skills in innovation and entrepreneurship. They collaborate with the L. William Crotty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Entrepreneurs Center at The Hub to provide impactful experiential learning opportunities for the students during the academic year.

High school students attending Dayton Public Schools are invited to apply to the University of Dayton Discover Entrepreneurship Summer Program, hosted by the L. William Crotty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Through immersive and interactive experiences at The Hub powered by PNC Bank, students will build their professional skills and learn to apply essential business practices to design their own business plans and compete for attractive scholarships to the University of Dayton in a final pitch competition.

Successful completion of the program will allow all students to earn 3 hours of college credit.

The Crotty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership hosts an annual dinner each spring to give our entrepreneurship students a chance to talk about their experiential opportunities and to celebrate the success of the entrepreneurship program. The Flyer Pitch finalists display their projects, and the winners are announced.

The University of Dayton is home to the Alpha Chapter of Epsilon Nu Tau, the nation's first entrepreneurship fraternity. It is a coed, professional organization which helps students launch and maintain sustainable businesses. ENT is open to students of all majors and academic disciplines.

Since the Everest Real Estate Challenge's inception in 2006, over 200 students have participated, creating interdisciplinary teams to analyze real-world real estate challenges and develop recommendations for moving forward.

Good leadership is essential for high-performing teams in our Sophomore Micro-Company Experience course. p3 represents the presidents of the sophomore, junior and senior year teams.

Two or three times an academic year, current and former team presidents meet to discuss good team management practices, obstacles overcome in past years and opportunities for personal growth in leadership skills for each team president.

The University of Dayton has an active ENT Club. Sponsored by the Crotty Center, this student-run club provides insight and exposure to the role of entrepreneurship in our economy.

Jim (UD alumnus) and Esther Eiting have established an endowment to bring local entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship students together on a regular basis to discuss events, concerns, opportunities and practices of mutual interest.

Visiting entrepreneur Larry Connor, CEO of The Connor Group, is a successful Dayton entrepreneur that has built a two billion dollar national company headquartered here in the Miami Valley. Larry visits our campus once a year to talk to our entrepreneurship students and share his experiences about what it takes to be successful in today's business environment.