At NC State, we've successfully woven the principles and spirit of entrepreneurship into programs and curricula across campus for more than a decade. This year, building on that success, we launched the Entrepreneurship Initiative, a multidisciplinary effort to transform higher education by encouraging our faculty and students to think outside the classroom.

Entrepreneurship is an essential part of educational innovation at NC State because it works. More than 450 students have completed the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, working in teams to turn creative concepts into marketable products. An alumnus from the first class was one of the founders of Red Hat. Two former students became partners and created DaVinci Systems, one of the world's leading e-mail products, at a time when NC State was emerging as a power in information technology. One of them went on to found Accipter, while another student created AuctionRover.com.

With the development of the Entrepreneurship Initiative, this spirit of achievement now encompasses graduate and undergraduate students in a wide range of disciplines, from science and engineering to textiles, design, the humanities, and business. Through the initiative, we're closing the gap between the classroom and the outside world, and making higher education an active player in the effort to develop a high-skilled workforce for the 21st century.

For example, a group of management and engineering students spent spring break in Silicon Valley learning - literally - at the elbows of top technology leaders at companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. When they returned to their classrooms in the fall, they did more than crack open textbooks; they created their own virtual companies and moved them through the start-up process, from product design and testing to market research, sales and manufacturing.

They also returned to campus with a new mindset, inspired in part by a meeting with alumnus John Steensen, a 1973 computer science graduate who runs Spatial Dynamics Corporation.

"Figure out what your track is, go after it, and don't let anybody get in your way," he told the students.

At NC State, we take that lesson to heart - and to the limit.