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Girls Club

Today's college women are gearing up to be tomorrow's entrepreneurs.

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This story appears in the July 2006 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

If you've been paying attention to the state of women'sbusiness, you've heard the oft-mentioned fact from the Centerfor Women's Research: Women-owned businesses aregrowing at twice the rate of all privately held firms. But we atEntrepreneur wondered: Is that passion for entrepreneurshiphitting women at the college level?

The good news is that, yes, entrepreneurial educators are seeingmore interest from young aspiring women entrepreneurs than everbefore, says Jill Kickul, the Elizabeth J. McCandless Chair inEntrepreneurship at Simmons College in Boston. "The [number]of women who are looking at as a career option isincreasing," she says. However, notes Kickul, young women arenot always confident in their business abilities, according torecent research conducted at Simmons in conjunction with theCommittee of 200, a national women's business networking andadvocacy nonprofit organization. The women who had the mostconfidence were the ones who had either a strong entrepreneurialrole model or some type of entrepreneurship training. Based on thatknowledge, Kickul says, Simmons' entrepreneurship training isbuilt around --bringing in successful entrepreneurs,having entrepreneurial labs and the like. "One practicumexperience involves working throughout a semester with a womanentrepreneur," says Kickul. "Students help [theentrepreneur] do various things--build a business model orstrategy, or a growth, financial or marketing plan."

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