Online Certificate

Certificate Requirements

This certificate is open to anyone and only requires 10 credits. Select any combination of the following courses to reach the total number of required credits and earn your certificate if you earn at least a C- grade in your courses. These are designed as one- to three-hour courses to give you just the specialization you need for where you currently are. Once you complete the certificate, you can learn more with a minor!

Available Courses:

• ENTR 1002 | Startup Innovation (3 cr)

  Instructor: Brandon Stoddard
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course presents an overview of entrepreneurship and helps students develop an entrepreneurial mindset; to identify problems and opportunities and to formulate viable entrepreneurial solutions. This is accomplished via proven processes and theories, designed to help ideation become customer needs driven instead of based solely on the instincts of the entrepreneur/student. Students will create, test and continuously update a business model based entirely upon customer feedback and customer development methodologies as described through Design Thinking, Lean Business Model and Business Model Canvas principles and tools. This class will also have students spend time ‘out of the building’ – learning what customers want and will pay for, prototype testing, iteration and feedback.

• ENTR 2006 | E-Commerce for Small Business (1 cr)

  Instructor: Chase Saxton
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course will help you establish an e-commerce foundation for your business that can be built upon as you grow. We’ll learn the steps needed to help your business start selling online. From which platform to use, to a growth strategy once a foundation is built, this course will aid your journey in becoming digitally mature entrepreneurs. Innovation, experiences gained, and execution of principles taught will be more important than papers written or assignments turned in.

• ENTR 2007 | Product Design & Prototyping (1 cr)

  Instructor: Gary Moore
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course presents the overall process of taking an idea through to a manufactured product ready for marketing and selling. Starting from the initial product idea, each lecture will cover a step in the process. Though specific skills and techniques will be covered, the goal is to understand primarily how to manage the process of design and development successfully. Students will learn to analytically vet ideas at the beginning and continually through the design and development cycle. They will also research successful products online and in-person, and understand what factors contributed to this effectiveness.

• ENTR 2008 | Legal Foundations for Small Business (1 cr) 

  Instructor: Joshua Irvine
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course is concerned with understanding and navigating some of the top legal issues facing business today. It is designed specifically for individuals who are, or intend to become, small business owners. The course has a dual focus on developing you: (1) as a more analytical and effective business owner, and (2) leader.

• ENTR 2009 | Money Management for Small Business (1 cr)

  Instructor: Jade Beckman
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course covers basic financial statements, creating pro-forma statements and analysis of financial statements.  The course will view finance from the entrepreneur, lender and investor’s perspectives. By the end of the course students will be able to evaluate and apply a range of financial techniques for business startup purposes.

• ENTR 2010 | Funding for the Small Business (1 cr)

  Instructor: Jade Beckman
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course presents traditional and non-traditional financing techniques appropriate for the entrepreneurial business startup. The course will view finance from the entrepreneur, lender and investor’s perspectives. By the end of the course students will be able to evaluate and apply a range of financial techniques for business startup or expansion purposes.

• ENTR 2011 | Results-Focused Leadership for Small Business (1 cr)

  Instructor: Doug Miller
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course is concerned with identifying, evaluating, and supporting metrics which promote outcomes which are important for your venture. It is designed specifically for individuals who are, or intend to become, small business owners. The course has a dual focus on developing your: (1) results-focused analytical abilities, and (2) leadership approach in directing/promoting employee growth. It is designed to give you insight into your own attitudes, beliefs, and leadership philosophy, to provide you with assessment tools that will help you diagnose, understand, and develop more effective and influential leadership programs for your business. It is also designed to provide skill development in important areas such as leadership, performance enhancement, teamwork, communication, and feedback-giving.

• ENTR 2012 | People Management for Small Business (1 cr)

  Instructor: Doug Miller
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course is concerned with understanding and managing the human resources of a small business. It is designed specifically for individuals who are, or intend to become, small business owners. The course has a dual focus on developing you: (1) as a more analytical and effective manager, and (2) leader. It is designed to give you insight into your own attitudes, beliefs, and management philosophy, to provide you with analytical tools that will help you diagnose, understand, and develop solutions to management problems. It is also designed to provide skill development in important areas such as leadership, performance enhancement, teamwork, communication, and feedback-giving.

• ENTR 2005 | Product to Market (1 cr)

  Instructor: Doug Miller
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  Entering this course, you will move forward with validating in the market an opportunity you have identified that you believe is a high-potential demand creation opportunity. It is expected that you have already 1) verified the customers’ job priorities, 2) verified that your value proposition is compelling to those customers, 3) designed a viable business model that you believe can profitably fulfill the value proposition, 4) ascertained an exhaustive set of value targets to inform solution design and 5) determined a demand creation strategy for commercializing the proposed solution (steps 1-5 in the AVID methodology). In this course, you’ll continue through the AVID cycle, moving deeper into the discovery process.

• ENTR 2002 | Marketing Strategy for Small Business (1 cr)

  Instructor: Ryan Treft
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course introduces students to marketing methods used by startups and early-stage companies with a particular an emphasis on pre-launch marketing strategies. This course seeks to develop the student’s understanding of delivering value, standing out from the competition, and having a compelling reason to exist. We will discuss differentiation, branding, targeting, and leveraging the power of collaborations (with existing brands, influencers and distribution partners) to gain instant traction in the marketplace. This course will use lectures, class discussions, assignments and a final project based on the student’s business idea.

• ENTR 2004 | Branding for Small Business (1 cr)

  Instructor: Doug Miller
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  Branding for Small Business takes you through the process of identifying an innovation opportunity to create a new product and/or service that can generate profitable revenue for an established organization (aka: corporate innovation or non-profit innovation). In this course, students take on the role of managers, both proposing an innovation project and evaluating other innovation projects on behalf of the organization. Managers use a disciplined approach to identify an important customer "job" that's not getting done well with existing solutions. Managers precisely and accurately define important and unsatisfied customer needs for this job and propose a new solution that can profitably satisfy those needs better than competing alternatives.

• ENTR 2003 | Marketing Execution for Small Business (1 cr)

  Instructor: Ryan Treft
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  This course introduces students to marketing methods used by startups and early-stage companies. We will discuss differentiation, branding, targeting, and leveraging the power of collaborations (with existing brands, influencers and distribution partners) to gain instant traction in the marketplace. This course will use lectures, class discussions, and assignments to examine existing companies and how they executed various marketing tactics.

• ENTR 2550 | Scale & Exit (3 cr)

  Instructor: Jason Yerka
  Delivery: Self-paced, 100% Online

  In this course, students will learn the concepts associated with market and product innovation, business viability, scalability and exit strategies.  While these concepts are best understood through real-world experiences (i.e. working on your own actual business), they may be applied theoretically as well. Whether taking this course to improve your current business or to prepare for a theoretical future business, at the end of the course students will have an opportunity to pitch their business or product idea to a panel of judges for the opportunity to obtain seed funding.

Certificate Tuition

most courses are one credit hour; two courses are three credit hours