A WEB OF SUPPORT HELPS BUSINESS STUDENTS EXCEL.

On the corner of April Cosner's desk, for every business student to see, sits a paperweight with something from Dr. Seuss that has become her mantra.

"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting so ... get on your way."

Business students do. Cosner, an HPU career advisor, helps hundreds of students a year with resumes, cover letters and interview skills as she guides them toward finding a passion, an internship or a job after graduation.

They come to Cosner's first-floor office in Cottrell Hall after first seeing Pam Francisco on the second floor. Francisco is a former high school principal who has served as a success coach the past four years for almost every first-year business student.

Her students see her as a surrogate mom; Francisco calls them "my kids."

She has a progress report on each one of them in a three-ring binder two inches thick. They'll come by often, sit across from her at her tall table in Cottrell, and hear what they need to do.

"Oh, you're smart enough to do this," Francisco, a mother of two grown daughters, will tell them about a course. "You just need to work a little harder."

So begins the journey of every business student at HPU. What they all find is a web of support, a network of staff and faculty who challenge them to excel, take risks, think like an entrepreneur and know that the art of selling is vital to everything they do.

DREAMS TAKE ROOT

At HPU, business majors make up about 25 percent of the university's entire population. That's more than 1,200 students who take one or more majors--accounting, business, entrepreneurship, international business, marketing and sales.

Six months after graduation, 96 percent of all HPU students either have a job or have gone on to graduate school.

That number is reflective of the entire campus population, and HPU business students mention that number with pride. Then, they'll start what they're doing--beginning a business, scoring another internship, entering a national sales competition and working hard so they can land a potential job.

Or they'll mention their nerves, about how they practiced their presentation for days, stepped before four judges, swallowed their fear and pitched a potential business. They say it was the scariest three minutes of their lives.

But they do it--and they learn. They feel a part of something special.

Alumni are no different. Take Jeremy Hiatt.

He's an accountant with Smith-Leonard, one of North Carolina's largest accounting firms, and he comes...