COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship in the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business stands out as a hotbed for angel investing, according to a new report released by the Angel Resource Institute, Silicon Valley Bank and CB Insights.

Avid sports fans Derek Shewmon, MBA ’09, and Federico Campbell, MBA ’09, had often found themselves watching games from the “nosebleed section,” and wondering why so many great seats remained empty throughout the game. They were classmates in Smith’s part-time MBA program in Washington in 2009 when that simple observation turned into a business idea.

Kevin Plank '96, founder and CEO of Under Armour, is looking for the nation's most passionate student entrepreneurs. Do you have what it takes? For the ninth year, Plank is partnering with the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business to host one of the nation's toughest business competitions. There's $115K on the line, and how does access to Kevin Plank's professional network sound?

Rajshree Agarwal, academic director at the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and the Rudy Lamone Chaired Professor in Entrepreneurship and Strategy at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, talks about the rationale behind teaching entrepreneurship and innovation at a university. 

The University of Maryland has once again made The Princeton Review's list of the country's top entrepreneurship programs. In the 2014 list of the "Top 50 Schools For Entrepreneurship Programs," published in Entrepreneur magazine, UMD ranks No. 15 for its undergraduate program. The university also ranks No. 16 for its graduate program, up eight spots from the 2013 rankings.

The 2013 Smith Marketplace challenged MBAs to create and operate a business in their very first week on campus as part of orientation. They worked in teams of five and had $150 to get their business off the ground.

Aspiring entrepreneurs got advice from their more seasoned counterparts as part of the Dingman Center’s Jumpstart program. Jumpstart is an intensive 5-day bootcamp where teams of University of Maryland students and alumni take a deep dive into building and refining their business model. The week features hands-on workshops and interactive advising sessions led by successful entrepreneurs, business executives, faculty and investors.

Smith’s Office of Global Initiatives hosted 75 Chinese MBA students from Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management in Beijing – one of China’s premiere business schools – for two weeks last month in College Park. The students, most of whom had never been to the United States, traveled to Maryland to experience business education in an American setting. The two groups were on campus from July 7 to 19 and attended special courses with Smith faculty Rosallina Ferraro, Xiaohui Gao, Brent Goldfarb, Mary Harms, Sunil Mithas, Janet Wagner, Liu Yang and Jie Zhang.

The Smith School is committed to offering entrepreneurship courses and weaving innovative thinking throughout the curriculum for all students. Case in point: “REAL660,” (#Real660), an MBA course that has students creating and running real businesses in a seven-week class. You can watch the drama unfold in a multi-part video series we’ll feature here for the next five weeks as part of our Innovation Fridays coverage.