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With a student to faculty ratio of just 11:1 and an online success coach for every undergraduate student, you’ll get the personal attention you need to maximize your potential. Secure your future now at UST.
Students can achieve their goals with a minor in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, taking only three core courses alongside three courses in your major. It’s tremendous value for your future career.
Leverage your skills, including time management, communication, empathy and networking, to become an entrepreneur in one of the following areas:
Growing up in North Carolina, Robert C. McNair knew many more of his high school classmates could have gone to university, but for the lack of money.
Bob McNair graduated from Cool Springs High School in Rutherford County, N.C. 1954, where he was an outstanding athlete and student leader. He continued his education and furthered his leadership skills at the University of South Carolina, where he was the president of the student body in his senior year. While in Columbia SC, Bob met his future wife, Janice Suber. Janice McNair, a graduate of Columbia College in Columbia, S.C., has always shared her husband’s vision and passion for helping others. The McNairs moved to Houston in 1960.
After some success career in the auto and truck leasing business, Bob started Cogen Technologies in 1983, headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Bob and Janice have always taken their roles as Christian stewards very seriously and after Cogen's initial success, decided to give back some of the fruits of their labor to the community where Bob was raised. On Christmas Eve of 1988, Bob and Janice called Chuck Flack, Bob's life-long friend in Forest City, N.C. to explore the possibilities of establishing a scholarship program that would increase the number of Rutherford County high school graduates going on to college. They believed that the best way to increase the standard of living in Rutherford County was to raise the level of educational attainment.
Bob McNair wanted to remove the financial barriers to college attendance by accessing all possible means of scholarship and other outside aid, and after exhausting those possibilities, providing direct aid from McNair funds, secured by a $1 million life insurance policy. In 1989, the Robert and Janice McNair Educational Foundation was officially launched, with the Class of 1990 being the first beneficiaries of the programs provided by the Foundation. Robert and Janice, recognizing that the funds for the foundation were generated through the free enterprise system, sought to keep its operation within the private sector, while seeking and giving full cooperation to the public school system in a genuine collaborative effort. This foundation’s activities started in one high school, then expanded and now it covers students from elementary through all the high schools and the community colleges in Rutherford County - with a continuous program of varied events, teambuilding, summer jump start program between middle and high school, visiting speakers and mentors, competitions, awards, dozens of service learning opportunities, athlete specific programs and scholarships. By 2012, the Foundation has assisted students in finding well over $11.9 million in college aid funding. Outside financial aid assistance received by students in just the year 2012 was $2,214,762.
In 1999, Bob sold Cogen Technologies but he retained ownership in power plants in New York and West Virginia. McNair serves as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The McNair Group, a financial and real estate firm that is headquartered in Houston, Texas and is Chairman of the McNair Foundation. Committed to bringing a National Football League team to the city of Houston, Bob McNair formed Houston NFL Holdings in 1998. On October 6, 1999, the NFL announced that the 32nd NFL franchise had been awarded to McNair. His Houston Texans debuted in 2002.
In 2015, based on their belief that the US free enterprise system had fostered not only their entrepreneurial opportunities, but the entire success of the US economy, they began establishing McNair Centers for Entrepreneurism and Free Enterprise; at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, the University of St. Thomas Houston, Houston Baptist University, the University of South Carolina, Northwood University in Midland, Mich., and Columbia College.
McNair was named Entrepreneur of the Decade by the Houston Technology Center and a Man of Distinction by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and was awarded the James A. Baker III Prize for Excellence in Leadership by the Baker Institute at Rice University.
He was inducted into the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame, the Texas Business Hall of Fame and the Houston Hall of Fame and was presented with an honorary doctorate of humanities from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of South Carolina.
The McNairs have four grown children,15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Leverage your nursing skills, including time management, communication, empathy and networking, to become an entrepreneur. You’ll also build new skills such as strategic thinking, resilience, creativity and confidence.
Example careers as a nurse entrepreneur:
Leverage your business skills, including time management, communication, marketing and customer service, to become an entrepreneur. You'll also build new skills such as strategic thinking, resilience, creativity and confidence.
Example careers as a business entrepreneur:
Leverage your liberal arts skills, including time management, communication, creative thinking and ethical awareness, to become an entrepreneur. You'll also build new skills such as problem solving, resilience, team building and the iterative process.
Example careers as a liberal arts entrepreneur:
The Center for Entrepreneurship helps students develop an entrepreneur mindset, a way of approaching challenges and mistakes to improve skills.
The McNair Name – Each minor graduate will receive the McNair badge, which they can prominently place on their website, Instagram, LinkedIn and other social media.
Cohort Development – The UST Entrepreneurship Minor is the only program in the nation with forum-based cohort learning. This is a unique program developed in partnership with MO and YPO.
Minor in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
In an ever-growing gig economy, where workers take on short-term contracts or freelance work, university graduates need to be prepared to create their own work and solve problems in an enterprisin way.
The habits you build by thinking like an entrepreneur can propel you to design your life as an entrepreneur, apply innovative thinking as an intrapreneur within an organization or boost your income and mitigate risk of job loss with a profitable side hustle.
Why a Minor in Entrepreneurship?
Students can achieve these goals with a minor in Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, taking only three core courses alongside three courses in your major. It’s tremendous value for your future career.
