General business majors will have the option to concentrate in entrepreneurship starting next year after the University Senate yesterday unanimously approved the addition to one of the campus’s smallest and most selective majors.

The year-long process of developing the program is part of the Robert H. Smith School of Business’s efforts to break into the national top-10 rankings in a few years, said Anil Gupta, a business professor and research director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. The center currently offers only one class for undergraduates and focuses on educating students at the masters level.

“Given the pace at which we’re strengthening the undergraduate program, it need not take more than five years to break into the top 10,” Gupta said.

The undergraduate business program is currently ranked No. 22 in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report.

The Dingman Center would manage the new concentration, which would teach students how to start and develop their own businesses.

The new entrepreneur track is composed of four classes that students can use to fulfill part of the general business major’s seven-class requirement. Now that the program has received the go-ahead from the university’s most powerful policy-making body, the program will begin the process of hiring two new faculty members for the program. The rest of the faculty for the program will be those already teaching in the masters program, Gupta said.

The new program also includes unique internship challenges. Because students interested in entrepreneurship likely plan to start their own companies after they graduate, they would probably not be interested in a traditional internship at a large corporation. The program would instead pair students with entrepreneurs in the midst of starting up a business.

“They’re less likely to be doing internships and then look for a job” Gupta said. “It would be more of an option for them to see a start-up from the inside and learn the ropes.”

Contact reporter Kate Campbell at campbelldbk@gmail.com.