By Steve Babcock

The Faculty Senate passed a plan for the creation of a School of Technological Entrepreneurship Thursday that would center its programming around interdisciplinary study between technology-oriented majors and business.

The new school would include team-taught courses that would provide students insight on marketing new technological developments.

Academic Specialist for the College of Business Admin-istration John Friar, who headed a team of administrators that drew up the plans for the school, said the college would establish cross-communication needed in the field so those who develop new products could be a step ahead of potential competition.

“These are two different sides that don’t often talk to each other — the business side and the technology side,” Friar said. “There’s a gap not only in education, but also in research that needs to be integrated.”

While the program’s primary offering will be a master’s degree, a minor will also be established for undergraduate students. Friar said the school will look to admit 10 full-time students a year, along with a “large number” of part-time students that would find the study meaningful.

“This will provide useful insight for people who already have patents (on their new developments) into how to get their product into the market,” he said. “On the business side, students will be able to learn what there is a demand for.”

Before opening, the school will have to hire a dean, who would mainly be responsible for fundraising, as well as five new professors, according to the proposal. In addition, the school would involve current professors from each discipline in teaching as well.

The university will look to the plan to hire star professors, detailed in the Academic Investment Plan, to help staff the school.

In terms of the resources provided by the Academic Investment Plan, Provost Ahmed Abdelal said the new hires in the School of Technological Entrepreneur-ship would only account for two-and-a-half faculty because of the way the faculty is budgeted.

College of Business Admin-istration Dean Ira Weiss said the program provides Northeastern with a way to “serve students in a way that they are not served today.”

“Students from different disciplines will sit together and learn each other’s language at an early level,” Weiss said. “No other school in the country is doing this now.”

Many faculty members, including Faculty Senate Chair Bob Lowndes, were skeptical of the creation of a school for the program, citing the further financial burden it would place on the university.

“There was no mention of this plan during the budget process,” Lowndes, who sat on the Committee on Funding Priorities that established the major foundations for next year’s budget, said. “We’re going to look rather silly. We have this new school with only two-and-a-half faculty and 10 students. We can go ahead with the program, but what is this pressure to create a new school?”

Many were also skeptical due to the failure of similar programs at other universities, including the University of Maryland and North Carolina State University, where the team visited when testing the school two years ago.

Dean Allen Soyster of the College of Engineering said those programs failed because they didn’t create a school that provided proper integration of business and the technological disciplines.

“When things worked out for the schools we visited, there was a permanent organizational structure. Schools that relied on the informal partnership across colleges didn’t make it,” he said.

The only successful college they visited, he said, was the University of Pennsylvania, where a specific program was created that provided what College of Computer Science Dean Larry Finkelstein called “full intellectual engagement” for the students and professors.

Ultimately, the resolution to create the school passed 24-11 in the Senate, pending approval from the University Board of Trustees.

Still, the school faces the initial challenge of raising enough money to operate. Most of those funds must come from outside contributions.

If the program is not seen as effective in three years, the Faculty Senate can cancel it through a review established by the proposal.

Dean James Stellar of the College of Arts and Sciences said the program would surely be an experiment.

“What we have here is a chance to raise funds that would benefit the whole university. I think we should do the experiment,” he said. “I’m prepared to kill this thing in three years if it doesn’t go through.”