UPPER BURRELL, Pa. — Penn State New Kensington students looking to augment their fields of study can learn to create and manage entrepreneurial companies with a new minor offered by the campus.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation was added this semester to the roster of minors available to campus students. The new program provides the entrepreneurial behavior and innovative thinking skills that are critical to career success. Using problem-based learning, the interdisciplinary minor prepares students to develop skills in problem solving, opportunity recognition, self-efficacy, leadership, communications and learning from failure.
To meet the students’ broad range of entrepreneurship and innovation interests, core courses establish foundational knowledge, and concentration clusters address specific contexts, such as entrepreneurship in food, technology, art, journalism, or Internet. The campus offers the New Ventures cluster of the minor.
The New Ventures specialization helps students develop the skills and ways of thinking required to create, develop, innovate and manage entrepreneurial companies. Students can learn about balancing limited resources, changing business direction, building an efficient team, managing intellectual property, and creating new markets.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation is the campus’ 10th minor. The others are business, business/liberal arts, civic and community engagement, communication arts and mass media, information sciences and technology, psychology, security and risk analysis, sustainability leadership, and women's studies.
Minors are an integral part of a university’s academic programs. Coursework can be concentrated in one discipline or several disciplines. Students supplement their majors with minors for a variety of reasons, including pursuing personal interests, specializing to become more attractive to employers, and laying a foundation for a career. It usually takes two years to fulfill the requirements of a minor.
For more on minors at the campus, visit http://www.nk.psu.edu/Academics/NKMinors.htm.
Four-year and two-year majors at campus
New Kensington offers nine baccalaureate degrees. Students can earn bachelor of science degrees in administration of justice, biobehavioral health, business, electro-mechanical engineering technology, information sciences and technology, nursing and psychology, and bachelor of arts in communications and psychology.
Biobehavioral health (BBH) is a new program for the campus and Penn State Greater Allegheny, which has joint authorization to deliver the degree. The new four-year major begins in fall 2016.
The BBH program is an innovative and interdisciplinary program designed to explore health from all angles. Scholarship and teaching focuses on how biological, behavioral, psychological, sociocultural, and environmental variables interact to influence health across time scales and levels of analysis. Research topics include physiological processes; health behaviors; genetics and epigenetics; chronic disease; neuroscience; global health; psychological states and processes; environmental exposures; bioethics; health disparities; and intervention science.
The Pittsburgh Regional Alliance has identified health care and life sciences as one of five “key sectors” of the region’s economy. A report from the Pennsylvania State Data Center has also identified biology and related health-industry majors as appealing to students in this region based on labor projections.
“The Pittsburgh area is a center of activity in the health care industry, and students in the BBH major will be able to move into many different fields,” said Andrea Adolph, director of academic affairs at the New Kensington campus.
For more on bachelor’s degrees at the campus, visit http://www.nk.psu.edu/Academics/bacc.htm.
In addition to bachelor’s degree programs, the campus offers five associate degree programs: biomedical engineering technology; business; information sciences and technology; letters, arts and sciences; and radiological sciences.
For more on associate degrees at the campus, visit http://www.nk.psu.edu/Academics/assoc.htm.
Bill Woodard
Alumni and Public Relations Specialist
