Dordt to Launch New Entrepreneurship Emphasis for Business Students

This spring, Dordt University approved a new entrepreneurship emphasis offered to students majoring in Business Administration, that will start in fall 2021.

Coupled with the current foundational courses, this emphasis will support business students that have an interest in someday running their own nonprofit or for-profit organization or will enable them to add innovative value to an existing organization.

“This emphasis will give students another option in the business major to be equipped to fulfill the work that God has equipped them to do and is calling them to do,” says Dr. Brian Hoekstra, business, accounting, and economic department chair.

Two of the courses that will be unique to the entrepreneurship area are Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation/Creative Thinking.

“I am looking forward to seeing how graduates leverage the classroom knowledge, the hands-on experience, and their own creativity and ingenuity to do things that haven’t been done before and that really help others,” says Hoekstra.

The Business Administration major is the largest academic program at Dordt University, and offers 10 emphases: entrepreneurship, construction management, finance, human resource management, information systems, international business, management, marketing, office management, and public administration.

“Business students now have another emphasis as an option,” says Lucas Bandstra, business student. “I had three uncles graduate from Dordt that started their own business and I can see that entrepreneurship skills are helpful for everyone.”

This new emphasis joins the new entrepreneurship minor offered to non-business students that was announced in December 2020. This minor will help students that have an interest in someday running their own organization, or seek to bring a product or service to market. For example, Health and Human Performance majors may someday want to open their own physical therapy business, pre-seminary students may feel called to someday lead a church, or social workers may want to establish their own practice.

“We wanted to make sure that we had academic paths available to all students regardless of subject matter interest,” says Jeff Kelly, director of the K & K Dooyema Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and business instructor.

Both the entrepreneurship emphasis and minor have been initiatives supported by the Dooyema Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which seeks to provide students, alumni and the broader community with best business practices, insight, and guidance, rooted in a deeply reformed Christian context, to prepare them for the challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurship and creative innovation in nonprofit, for-profit, closely held, and family business organizations.

For more information on these programs, please contact:

Jeff Kelly, Director of the K & K Dooyema Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation | jeff.kelly@dordt.edu | 712-722-6342

As an institution of higher education committed to the Reformed Christian perspective, Dordt University equips students, faculty, alumni, and the broader community to work toward Christ-centered renewal in all aspects of contemporary life. Dordt, located in Sioux Center, Iowa, is a comprehensive university named to the best college lists by U.S. News and World Report, Forbes.com, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Monthly, and Princeton Review.