EOS-210 Opportunities and Impact
Understanding opportunity, through opportunity recognition and assessment, is at the foundation of addressing pressing challenges, developing beneficial social impacts, and all aspects of entrepreneurship. In this course, students will learn more about opportunity recognition and assessment by being exposed to four major problems facing society. Using analytical and creative thinking skills, students will identify a real problem confronting a real place (city, region, or country) and design and develop a solution that delivers a clear benefit to others.
EOS-241 Business Organizations, Management, and Finance
This course provides an introduction to business and organizational economics and analytics and to broad business organization topics. Solutions to business and organization challenges necessarily include technological, social, environmental, and political components, as well as financial and market components. Profitability, sustainability, and success are not so easily achieved by simple marginal pricing models. We want to learn more about this greatly expanded view of managerial decision-making through a socio-economic lens. This is not a matter of ideology; it is a very practical approach because that is now how businesses operate and function. Using this approach -- models, cases, analysis, problem-solving -- will also strengthen students' capacity for business analytics and consulting.
EOS-249 Ethics in Entrepreneurship and Business
This course uses the traditional approaches of moral philosophy to explore ethical challenges and obligations faced by individuals, businesses, and organizations in an increasingly complex global environment. Through consideration of philosophical theories and particular cases, we explore issues such as the social roles and ethical obligations of businesses or organizations; rights and responsibilities of workers, managers, and owners; ethics in sales and marketing; and ethics in a global business environment.
EOS-253 Social Entrepreneurship and Impact
In this course, students will learn more about opportunity recognition and assessment by being engaged in addressing major global problems as they are manifested locally or regionally. Students will work in teams to identify how these global issues appear locally (each team will select a locality) and how various populations are affected, will learn to assess the issue and situation from those stakeholders' perspectives, will explore and evaluate opportunities to create a project, action, business, social enterprise or organization that positively creates some solution to these problems and delivers a clear benefit to others.
EOS-295 Independent Study
EOS-295P Independent Study with Practicum
EOS-299AR Topics in Entrepreneurship: 'Ethics and Artificial Intelligence'
Artificially intelligent technologies are prominent features of modern life -- as are ethical concerns about their programming and use. In this class we will use the tools of philosophy to explore and critically evaluate ethical issues raised by current and future AI technologies. Topics may include issues of privacy and transparency in online data collection, concerns about social justice in the use of algorithms in areas like hiring and criminal justice, and the goals of developing general versus special purpose AI. We will also look at ethics for AI: the nature of AI 'minds,' the possibility of creating more ethical AI systems, and when and if AIs themselves might deserve moral rights.
EOS-299ND Topics in Entrepreneurship: 'Individuals and Organizations'
This course focuses on individual and small-group behavior in the organizational setting. The class will focus on: (1) understanding human behavior in an organizational context; (2) understanding of oneself as an individual contributor and/or leader within an organization, and ways to contribute to organizational change; (3) intergroup communication and conflict management; and (4) diversity and organizational climate.
EOS-310 Social Entrepreneurship Capstone
Project-based learning course: students bring ideas, projects, and plans to develop toward implementation. Learn about organization startup in social and environmental context. Students engage in class discussions and attend short lectures and, working individually or in teams, develop projects to an implementation stage. Results include having a well-designed solution that delivers real benefit to identified stakeholder(s).
EOS-341 Advanced Managerial Economics
This course will use an intensive case-study approach mixed with lectures, readings, and discussions. The focus is investigating the economics of management and enterprise (firms, organizations) decision-making in local/regional, national, and global settings, the intersections of economic considerations with social and political considerations, and the frameworks and tools for analyzing the behaviors and decisions of various enterprises. Class participation in the discussions is essential. Students will also develop and provide presentations of case analyses.
EOS-349 Advanced Topics in Entrepreneurship
EOS-349ED Advanced Topics in Entrepreneurship: 'Economic Ecosystems: Community and Regional Economic Development and Entrepreneurship'
This class uses Western Massachusetts as a case study and engages students with local communities through community-based learning to get real-world, hands-on, project-based experience linking business creation with community-based development. This class will introduce data and regional analysis and modelling as one way of doing the analysis. We will study communities and regions as "ecosystems" and analyze components of these ecosystems. We will also recognize the convergence of sociology, politics/policy, economics, environment and of key issues: income, inequalities, business formation, financing, community and social needs, housing, jobs, land use, environment, and development.
EOS-349GT Advanced Topics in Entrepreneurship: 'Global and International Entrepreneurship'
This course will explore the variations in local, global, national, and international, entrepreneurial activity based on location-specific policies, societies and culture, economics, and community values and supports. Students will gain skills with data-driven descriptive and analytical tools and learn about global and local perspectives and relationships. The course will take an interdisciplinary approach to analysis and understanding of a topic, teamwork, presentations, business economics themes and concerns, and the practices and consequences of entrepreneurship.
EOS-349MV Advanced Topics in Entrepreneurship: 'Motivation'
In this course, we will examine multiple theories of motivation and their relevance across a range of organizational settings (including corporations, special programs, and schools or colleges). How do we spark interest in a new subject or inspire people to undertake a challenging project? How do we sustain persistence in ourselves and others? This course is relevant for students interested in motivation, whether for attainment (such as within in human resources, talent development, or management) or for learning (whether for students, teachers, or leaders). Because motivation is closely linked to learning and achievement, in addition to well-being and purpose, we will also consider these topics and more.
EOS-349NQ Advanced Topics in Entrepreneurship: 'Organizations and Inequality'
In Organizations and Inequality, we analyze how organizations create, reproduce, and also potentially challenge social inequalities. Drawing on different organizational perspectives, students will engage the challenges of ethical action in a complex world marked by competing rationalities and deep inequalities. Students will also research an organization of which they are a member and develop their own case study.
EOS-395 Independent Study
A student minoring in EOS must take one course from each subject area, with at least one course at the 300 level.
Being an entrepreneur in today’s rapidly changing world requires the ability to apply critical, analytical and creative thinking to the global and local problems at hand, process large amounts of information from a range of knowledge areas, work in teams, assess financial resource requirements and feasibility, and communicate effectively. In these courses, students start to develop these capabilities.
Organizations are central structures of society. Nonprofits, public institutions, and private businesses are all shaped by the particular histories, legal traditions, and relationships of power in different societies. To function well in organizations and leverage them to affect social needs, students need to understand the roles of different types of organizations, hierarchies of power, regulatory frameworks, social impacts, and ethical decision-making in organizational structures. These courses provide students with such understandings.
To effect positive change, students need to understand the structures of inequality underlying many of the problems they aim to address. In these courses, students learn how systemic forces shape inequality along different axes (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and nationality), and how individual, collective and government actions interact with these dynamics in pursuit of greater social justice.
Assessing, accessing and effectively employing resources to address social needs are important elements of entrepreneurship. In these courses students learn and gain practice in understanding, analyzing and using financial resource information and processes.
