The University of Dayton entrepreneurship program gave three students and two faculty members from St. Mary's University (San Antonio, Texas) a UD welcome last week as a part of a cooperative effort to improve each university's business program.

Interim Business Dean Jim Welch of St. Mary's, a true Texan with a southern drawl and a suntan in the middle of March, said he and his students are visiting Dayton to build on "a strategic plan to start a student-managed business modeled after Flyer Enterprises." They have a T-shirt company as the business in mind.

St. Mary's choice to follow UD's example began with a grant endowed by St. Mary's alumnus Bill Greehey, its business school's namesake and chairman of the Board of Valero Energy Corporation, the largest oil refining company in the United States, according to its Web sites.

Welch says that when Greehey came to UD to speak, he found the success of its entrepreneurship program so impressive (it's now No. 4 in the nation by Princeton Review), that "He endowed St. Mary's business program with $25 million with the goal in mind of starting a student-run thing like Flyer Enterprises."

The Blend, one of Flyer Enterprises' businesses, was transformed into a corporate meeting room for the two schools to collaborate, with round tables donning white linen cloth, nametags and papers neatly placed in a circular fashion.

The guests filed into the room with a businesslike and dignified atmosphere to participate in one of the programs for the week, the "Walk the Talk" business ethics workshop.

Brother Victor Forlani, SM, management and marketing professor, said this program is aimed at "... doing business as a calling," and using it to "better society. He said there are business professionals at every table to inject real-world experience into the dialogue, not just relying on theories but on experience in implementing them.

Welch said this is the second year he has visited UD with other faculty and students from St. Mary's.

"It comes from our spirit of collaboration,"

Forlani said. "We are a family trying to help and support each other."