The University of Minnesota entrepreneurship department announced last month that students will now own the intellectual property rights to businesses created as class projects, a benefit already available to St. Thomas students.

According to Entrepreneurship professor David Deeds, St. Thomas has one of the best programs in the nation. He attributed this to engaging teaching techniques and student and alumni incubators, which are small, rent free offices used to help launch potential growing businesses.

“We’ve had several students that were able to move forward with their ideas, refine them, work on them, and then move forward,” Deeds said.

Andrew Kincheloe, 2012 alumnus and founder of Buddy’s Small Batch Nut Butter, is occupying one of the offices. His company provides artisan nut spreads to seven Twin Cities stores. Kincheloe said that the department’s help after graduation has been effective.

“I have a free office; they’re working on getting me an intern for free, mentorship programs, the networking events … connecting with people who know things about business,” Kincheloe said. “All these little things that we don’t know about, or we don’t learn about in class, we can learn about outside of class with professors, or with people that are part of the entrepreneurship program.”

Deeds said that, on average, one in every 20 entrepreneurship projects started at St. Thomas becomes successful, which is enough to keep the incubators full.

“A small percentage make it. In my time here, we’ve had two to three viable ventures a year founded that I know of. That keeps the incubation full, and it comes from our entrepreneurship students, and it comes from other students,” Deeds said.

Alison Bengtson can be reached at Beng4632@stthomas.edu.