Shuford Away
Semester Away
New York City, New York
January 16 — May 20, 2026
At A Glance
UNC Honors in New York – Entrepreneurship (Semester Away in New York City)
- Program Leader: Jed Simmons
- Program Contact: Holland Page
- Program Partner: Honors Carolina
- Dates: January 16th – May 20th, 2026
- ECON 325 Bootcamp: January 4th – January 16th, 2026 in Durham, NC
- Prerequisites: ECON 125
- Eligibility: Open to all UNC-Chapel Hill undergraduates (second-year status or greater) with a 3.0 GPA who have completed ECON 125. Students who complete this program will be admitted to the Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship.
- Application Due Date: September 10th, 2025
While ECON 125 is a prerequisite for the program, students must also complete ECON 101 OR ECON 111 to fulfill all minor requirements.
Program Overview
The Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship partners with Honors Carolina for an immersive entrepreneurship experience in New York City. Students live and work in an iconic city while completing most of the Entrepreneurship minor in a single semester, combining virtual communities of UNC students taking classes while sharing their experiences in entrepreneurial internships in a variety of industries. Through their coursework and additional programming, students will meet entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, product leaders, thought leaders, design thinkers, and industry leaders, visiting companies and venues at the heart of New York’s entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem. Students complete ECON 325H, an ECON 327 equivalent, and an ECON 393 equivalent in addition to the required Shuford Program internship. Students who are accepted and commit to completing the Shuford Semester Away program are automatically accepted into the on-campus Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship.
Get a head start on the transition from college to career with a transformative semester experience that combines interdisciplinary coursework, a professional internship, and co-curricular programming in one of the most diverse and innovative cities in the world. Students earn at least 14 credit hours through 4 required courses; they remain enrolled at UNC-Chapel Hill and enroll at Bard College for some courses, earning both UNC and transfer credit with a full semester’s work going toward general education and major or minor requirements. An internship for 20 hours per week provides valuable educational experiences in a cross-cultural context and satisfies the Shuford Program requirement.
Internship placements combined with academic coursework allow students to appreciate connections between theory and practice and gain exposure to potential career choices. A suitable placement for each student will be based on their goals, interests, previous coursework, and skills. Positions are available in art and design, education, theater, film, business, government, journalism, law, social enterprise, entrepreneurship, marketing and PR, museums, social services, and more.
Program Components
Professor: Jed Simmons, Vickie Gibbs
Prerequisites & Permissions: ECON 125
Grading Status: Letter Grade
ECON 325H Entrepreneurship: Principles, Concepts, Frameworks, and Fluency is the foundational course in the Entrepreneurship Minor. This course is designed to help students prepare for the 21st Century and provides a foundation in key principles, concepts, and fluency in entrepreneurship, specifically in the areas of design thinking, understanding consumers and customers, company strategy, and entrepreneurial finance and capital formation.
Students will study the building blocks of innovation while preparing for their careers and network, learning important skills and tools important in startups and growth companies such as branding, storytelling and video making. This course is taught as a two-week intensive “boot camp” at the beginning of the semester to provide a granular approach to the most important tasks required to create a new enterprise. The course meets for more than four hours a day at American Underground in Durham, NC before students depart for New York.
Professor: Jed Simmons
Prerequisites & Permissions: None
Grading Status: Letter Grade
Business Venturing Workshop – Exploring Entrepreneurial Ecosystems looks at innovation and entrepreneurship in leading (e.g., New York, London, San Francisco, Los Angeles), emerging (e.g., Austin, Detroit, RTP, Boulder), and developing (e.g., New Orleans, Birmingham, Charleston, Columbus) startup communities. The course explores what makes these ecosystems thrive. We learn about and experience some of the companies, products, and technologies that have emerged from these hubs. We meet founders, leaders, investors, governments, and companies as we learn more about how companies were built, developed, pivoted, and thrived (or did not).
This course will transfer back to UNC-Chapel Hill as ECON 327H.
Professor: Bard College Faculty
Prerequisites & Permissions: None
Grading Status: Letter Grade
The Future of Work is structured around core readings accompanied by weekly discussions on student internship experiences. These discussions connect the readings with the conditions students face at their temporary workplace using both more traditional and experiential learning methods. Students read pertinent articles about work (both in general and also in their field of study) and identify the ways readings are a good approximation of what they face in practice. They write a short piece about their internship expectations at the beginning of the class and keep a running diary of their experiences. At the end of the course, students present their internship experience and write a short reflection on what they were able to achieve and the challenges they faced. These end-of-course reflections come naturally to students as they will be engaged in thoughtful class discussions both with their instructors and their peers throughout the semester. By the course, students will be better equipped to make informed decisions about their future and their work plans.
This course will transfer back to UNC-Chapel Hill as ECON 393H.
Students take the lead on finding an internship that fits their interests (additional support is available) in growth companies like startups or scale-ups or for innovative departments within more established organizations. During the 20-hour-a-week internship, students gain hands-on experience, bridging classroom content from ECON 393H with practical skills gained at work.
Professor: Bard College Faculty
Prerequisites & Permissions: None
Grading Status: Letter Grade
Students are also required to take 1 additional elective course through Bard College. Course names and descriptions can be found here under Course Catalog.
Program Costs
The Spring 2026 budget will be posted soon!