Contact Pauline Austin (541) 346-3133 July 15, 1997 EUGENE--A national group who knows best how to jump start a new business this year said one of the outstanding MBA programs to help you learn how to do that is found at the University of Oregon's Charles H. Lundquist College of Business. In a national competition that included a finalists' presentation before a panel of judges, the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) handed the UO college its award for the 1997 Outstanding MBA in the Field of Entrepreneurship. "This award is testament to the efforts of many within the Lundquist College of Business to create a learning community focused on entrepreneurship and emerging business opportunities," says Dean Timothy McGuire. The USASBE honored the Lundquist College of Business with this prestigious award for two reasons. One, the MBA program integrates a broad spectrum of entrepreneurial themes throughout its new curriculum, specifically Opportunity Planning Teams that emphasize working with actual companies to assess and pursue opportunities. Second, activities such as the New Venture Competition, internships, and student and community outreach programs sponsored by the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship help to keep faculty and students focused on entrepreneurship. "We used a different approach to present our program at this conference," adds Mark Lange, director of the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship. "We featured our best product--a first-year student, Lisa Menachof of Santa Rosa, Calif.--to describe our `new generation' curriculum." The finalists' made their presentations at a pre-conference meeting on entrepreneurial education sponsored by The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The college received its award at the 42nd Annual International Council for Small Business World Conference held in San Francisco in June. "I like the size of the Lundquist program and how responsive they are to students," says Lisa Menachof, who helped Lange make the winning presentation at the pre-conference event. She related her experiences in her just-completed first-year work toward her MBA in entrepreneurship. Menachof says she helped out at the New Venture Competition and got some valuable insight into what to do in making a presentation for a new venture to investors--not just for the professor in class. As a first-year student also she worked with a small student team to help a local manufacturer research and analyze a new business venture. -more- Thanks to the Lundquist college approach, this summer Menachof is working as a marketing intern with Community Hospital in Santa Rosa on projects related to its acquisition by a larger health care organization. As an intern focusing on internal communications and marketing projects with Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa, her work will enable the organization to react more entrepreneurally to the turbulent health care environment. According to USASBE president-elect Charles Hofer, a faculty member at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, the Lundquist College's MBA program is tailored to meet today's business students' needs since more than half a million businesses are started every year in the U.S.. "Entrepreneurship is the most rapidly growing field in business education in the country. In the 1960s, fewer than 10 schools offered courses in small business and entrepreneurship. Now there are more than 500," Hofer said. USASBE is the U.S. affiliate of the International Council for Small Business. The 42nd annual world conference represents small businesses in 67 countries. The international council's membership represents the leading educators, trainers, consultants and government officials involved in supporting small business and entrepreneurship. The primary goal of the international council is to promote the exchange of information, programs and research targeted at examining the issues of starting, managing, and growing small businesses and entrepreneurial ventures. -30- #P-1005/Lcl Bus, OrD/Bus, SBus