Entrepreneurship is flourishing at Appalachian State University with more than a thousand graduates active in small businesses and more than 200 students enrolled each year in entrepreneurship classes. And this is just part of the thousands of students on campus interested in their own businesses and looking for ways to achieve that goal.

ASU Chancellor Kenneth E. Peacock and several staff members visited Ashe County this week to talk about the university and its education and entrepreneurship programs.

The Center for Entrepreneurship was created at ASU in 2006 within the Walker College of Business in order to support the growing number of student entrepreneurs. Small business has been encouraged and supported in the region, and particularly in Ashe County in recent years, in response to the loss of industry jobs and the opportunity for people to work for themselves. This was a strong recommendation by the AngelouEconomics report developed in 2003.

Guests at the chancellor’s “listening tour,” held at Jefferson Landing on a picture perfect spring day, heard from Bryan Toney, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, about the center’s programs and resources.

Toney notes that 81 percent of ASU students have thought about starting a business while 28 percent say their primary career goal is to own their own business, and 71 percent would like to add a course in entrepreneurship to their studies.

Toney reported at the event that the Center for Entrepreneurship is establishing a degree in entrepreneurship in the business program, said Ashe County Economic Development Director Dr. Pat Mitchell, and also establishing a minor in entrepreneurship for students in any other major. He said this would be a strong minor for students in the arts, hospitality and other fields for business skills.

Those gathered at Jefferson Landing also heard from Diana Beasley, North Carolina Teacher of the Year for 2006-07 and director of Teacher Education Recruitment, who will be doing teacher recruitment for the university, and from Chuck Bowling, director of College Awareness Programs.

College Awareness Programs at ASU include TRIO Upward Bound, providing services to high school students from low income families in Ashe, Avery, Watauga and Wilkes counties who will be among the first generation to attend college, and the Appalachian GEAR UP Partnership, providing services in low wealth middle and high schools to increase the likelihood of these students earning a degree or certification. This program partnered with Ashe County from 1999 to 2005, and efforts are underway to seek a grant to continue it.

“This was the third annual Listening Tour and I think it provides a valuable service to the community to hear what the university is doing in programs and services provided to the region,” said Dr. Mitchell. “And it is also a great value to the university, the chancellor and his faculty to come into their neighbor counties and have direct interaction with community leaders and hear the value they place on the university’s services.”