The Nation's Best Kept Entrepreneurial Secret

Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 9:21AM by

Jeff |

I recently attended the retirement festivities for my long time friend and college professor, Tom Mason. For all intensive purposes, Dr. Mason created and ran the entrepreneurship “department” at Rose-Hulman, my alma matter. He was recently honored at this year's Mira Awards for his contributions to technology and entrepreneurship in Indiana.

You see, Rose-Hulman is widely known (in the very small circle that follows such things) as the #1 undergraduate-focused school for Science, Engineering, and Mathematics in the US, and has been for quite a while now. Rose prides itself on this feat, as well they should. However, I’ve been trying to push them in a direction to trumpet more of their business successes as well.

Holding a whole variety of administrative positions during his time at Rose, Tom was also first and foremost, a teacher. He taught in the economics department, the only non-technical major available at the school. While I was there I was signed up as a double-major in computer science and economics, but my interactions with Tom was primarily in his specialty area of entrepreneurship.

I took a 300-level class called “The Entrepreneur” which is about the only business-ish class you can take at the school. I wrote my first business plan as part of an independent study course Tom mentored for me that we called “The Entrepreneur II”. Basically, I launched my first business with a mountain of technical training, a vision, the business mentorship of Tom Mason behind me.

Now, you can declare a minor in Technical Entrepreneurship, thanks to Tom. Likewise, they’ve launched a graduate program called Engineering Management, which is everything that a tech-minded engineer wishes his or her MBA program actually had been.

As far as technology focused universities go, Rose is light-years ahead in thinking about the intersection of entrepreneurship and technology and what it means for students. This achievement rests squarely on the shoulders of Tom Mason.

Now, what’s important to note is that Rose-Hulman is not a big school. The total student enrollment is 1,800, hardly larger than my own high school. The student-to-faculty ration is 12:1. It’s a small place where your interaction with professors is high, and the professors themselves teach all the courses, most of which meet 4 or 5 days a week. Classes are packed together, bells ring to mark the ends of periods. The classroom buildings are all connected together to form one large structure. The whole thing operates with a pace that is lot more like a high school than a traditional university.

Despite the small size, Rose alumni have gone on to do some great things. Bernard Vonderschmitt was the founder of Xilinx. Dennis Carter is the VP of Marketing at Intel that came up with the “Intel Inside” campaign. Andrew Conru founded Friend Finder, Mike Hatfield founded Calix, Cerent, and Cyan. In 2009, Forbes magazine picked the top 20 most promising companies in America – two of them were founded by Rose-Hulman grads (one of which is my own Scale Computing).

If you think about that last point for a bit, it’s pretty shocking. Forbes reviewed over 4500 companies during their selection process. 2 of 20 winners hail from a school of 1800 students, tucked away in an obscure midwestern town most famous for being the home of Larry Bird’s college days at Indiana State.

Something special goes on at Rose, and when it comes to connecting innovation, education, and entrepreneurship, they owe a great deal to the work of Dr. Mason. One of his greatest insights is something I’ll share in my next blog post, and it relates to how innovation impacts all aspects of business.

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Reader Comments (18)

Great post about Tom, he is a great guy, and a great teacher. Also, we've got to be the only two people with double majors in CS and Econ from Rose, Tom was big part of that for me too.

June 10, 2010 |

Jeremy Newton

Great article. I didn't know many entrepreneurs RH produced. Scott Himes also has a degree in CS and Econ. I did CS and Math, but in hindsight, I wish I had chosen CS and Econ.

June 10, 2010 |

Brian Kiefer

Another great post Tom. Rose certainly has certainly turned out more than its fair share of great technology and science-based entrepreneurs. I think it is a great testament to the innovative minds that attend. I have very similar feelings about my alma mater DePauw. Go small midwestern universities.

June 17, 2010 |

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