NEW YORK (FORTUNE Small Business) - Business schools such as Babson (see cover story) and Stanford have long offered many excellent entrepreneurship programs. Here's a sampling of 10 cutting-edge programs for budding entrepreneurs.

At DePaul's Ryan Center for Creativity, entrepreneurship students, local business leaders, and alums learn better ways to brainstorm new business concepts in sessions led by experts on creative thinking.

More from FSB A scanner the size of a pen My competitors keep hiring illegals! Portland, Ore: The indie city Current Issue

(or part of name) OR ----------- state ------------ Alaska Alabama Arkansas Arizona American Samoa California Colorado Connecticut District of Columbia Delaware Florida Federated States of Micronesia Georgia Guam Hawaii Iowa Idaho Illinois Indiana Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Massachusetts Maryland Maine Marshall Islands Michigan Minnesota Missouri Mississippi Montana North Carolina North Dakota Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico Nevada New York Northern Mariana Islands Ohio Oklahoma Ontario Oregon Pennsylvania Palau Island Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Vermont Virgin Islands Washington Wisconsin West Virginia Wyoming

Quotes See more

Business sense: Instinct or learned? • Do you need school to succeed? • Teaching business basics to kids • 10 cool colleges for entrepreneurs

Quick Vote Can entrepreneurship be taught in school?   Yes   No or View results

Claiming the largest minority enrollment of any institution in the U.S., FIU has brought diversity to the world of student startups. Courses on international trade emphasize starting ventures that aim to trade with South and Central America and the Caribbean.

Harvard has 17 endowed chairs in entrepreneurship. All 900 MBA students are required to take an entrepreneurship course in their first semester. To teach new-venture development, Harvard uses its classic case-study format -- with a twist: CEOs of the companies under discussion are invited to participate. Recent visitors: David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue, and fashion designer Kate Spade.

All incoming students must participate in Entrepreneur's Boot Camp during orientation. In the eight-hour course they study, among other things, financial self-discipline and the history of black enterprise in the U.S. A $3.5 million grant helped establish a new minor in entrepreneurship this year.

The only women's business school in the U.S., Simmons last year instituted a six-month entrepreneurship program tailored specifically to women. Candidates must have an MBA; most have a decade of work experience.

One of the first tribal colleges in the U.S. when it was founded in 1973, Sitting Bull has launched a pioneering program to teach entrepreneurship to Native Americans. A key goal: to create jobs on the Standing Rock Reservation (pop. 12,000), where unemployment is at 76 percent. Educators seek to emulate the economically and culturally independent Amish.

Started in 1984, the university's entrepreneurship program is one of the oldest and most competitive in the U.S. Only 100 graduate and undergraduate students are accepted each year. To sharpen the focus on high-growth sectors such as biotech, the program has recruited new faculty.

A leader in "green" entrepreneurship, this program specializes in helping students create companies that are eco-friendly and socially progressive. Leaders of Boulder's organic and natural-products industry offer support.

To speed the creation of new startups, UT offers students office space, technology, and access to advisors at its business incubator. Of the 62 companies that have been launched to date, four are listed on Nasdaq. In 1999, Motorola paid approximately $98 million to acquire one of them, Metrowerks, a creator of hardware and software. The university also hosts Moot Corp., a prestigious international business-plan competition offering the largest prize -- $183,500 -- of any such contest.

The university has embedded entrepreneurship courses in virtually every department on campus -- including computer science, engineering, religion, and music. Engineering students are working with those in anthropology to design a nonpolluting bus for the city of Rochester.

___________________

More from FORTUNE Small Business's cover package:

• Do you need school to succeed? Click here to find out.
• Are kids too young to learn balance sheets?
• Gates: What I wish I'd learned in school

More on top schools:

10 most expensive colleges

Ultimate college guide 

To write a note to the editor about this article, click here.