Courses
Five courses provide the intellectual foundation for the certificate. Each must be taken for a letter grade unless Pass/D/Fail is the only option.
Introductory Courses (2)
Take the 2 courses below.
Core Courses (2)
Select two courses from the list below.
Contextual Breadth Course (1)
Select a course from the list below or propose a course outside of this list (subject to program director approval). Science and engineering students must use a humanities or social science course to satisfy this requirement.
Entrepreneurship Workshop
Students must take part in one workshop providing practical skills in entrepreneurship. Workshops do not offer academic course credits and are typically 3.5 hours long.
Practicum
Creative and practical experience in entrepreneurship is required outside of classroom learning. The practicum fosters the entrepreneurial mindset in certificate students. They learn by doing in settings including startups, corporate-to-service organizations and not-for-profits.
Students go through a process of:
- customer research and empathy
- hypothesis setting and testing
- prototyping and deployment
Students often create an actual entrepreneurial enterprise through this process. This is encouraged but not required.
The practicum requirement can be fulfilled with a practical activity (eLab, Tiger Challenge, internship, startup, etc.) followed by an analysis exercise based on that activity. Participation in such an activity does not in and of itself meet the practicum requirement. Neither can a junior paper, senior thesis, chapter of a senior thesis, or other independent work.
The analysis should be rigorous and based on frameworks from the certificate’s introductory or core courses. Students develop a novel hypothesis in the practicum project, and make recommendations based on those analyses and frameworks.
Upon registering for the certificate, each student is assigned a faculty member as program advisor.
A committee consisting of the program advisor and a faculty member reviews the practicum proposal and final products. Potential end users for the product or service may also be consulted in the review process.
The final presentation to the committee is not a traditional investor pitch. Instead, the student should discuss:
- How the hypothesis was derived
- How the practical testing and prototype development and deployment was carried out
- An analysis based on the framework of the certificate required and core courses
- The evaluation focuses on the process of entrepreneurial endeavor and leads to a pass/fail result
Colloquium
Students are required to present their practicum, or a combination of their academic work and practicum, at least twice before graduation:
- An annual program poster session
- In a session of a periodic program colloquium
These social events also foster community and conversation among certificate students. They receive mentorship from faculty, alumni and others, which helps build interaction across the Princeton entrepreneurial community.