By Joseph Marks
Herald Staff Writer - 08/19/2007

One UND business professor is getting a head start on teaching before UND classes begin this week.

For the past nine days, professor Jeff Stamp has been teaching entrepreneurship at Syracuse University to wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Because of their new disabilities, wounded soldiers often have trouble re-integrating into the jobs they left before their service, said Stamp, who chairs UND's entrepreneurship program.

Stamp described the “entrepreneurship boot camp” as an opportunity to help those soldiers create new business careers and put the skills they learned in the military to work in the world of business.

“When they first come into the program, they feel like they're behind academically, because they've been in the (military),” Stamp said. “But (while working in the private sector) I always enjoyed military employees because of their great discipline.

“They understand tactical strategy and contingency plans. When these guys find out they have the skills set to make it in this world, they light up. Entrepreneurship is all about making decisions, paying attention and reacting.”

Stamps' students ranged in age from 21 to 43, he said, and ran the gamut from privates to captains. Many of the students had only been back from the war less than a year, he said, and one student had only been back three months.

Each of the 20 students came to the program with a well-developed business idea, he said. The professors' job was to fine tune those plans and give students crash courses in marketing, business development, finding financial backers and everything else that makes a successful business run.

“They had some incredible stories,” Stamp said. “I tell everyone, this story wasn't about me, it was about what these young men and women are trying to accomplish. We were just the catalysts and the enablers.”

The Syracuse program was free to students and funded entirely by the university. Stamp said he hopes to create a similar program at UND within the next year. Soon after returning, he said, he plans to talk with UND officials, the UND Foundation and North Dakota National Guard officials.

“I'd love to bring a program like this to Grand Forks because of the broad need in our region,” Stamp said. “With the university and the foundation and the base and the army presence here, if we can't do something like this, it's our own fault.”

Marks reports on higher education. Reach him at (701) 780-1105, (800) 477-6572, ext. 105; or jmarks@gfherald.com. This story can also be found at http://www.grandforksherald.com/articles/index.cfm?id=47454&section=news.