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The UCLA Anderson School of Management was recently named “Best in Entrepreneurship” worldwide by the Financial Times for a fourth consecutive year.

The Harold Price Center, a research center in the Anderson School, offers a wide range of academic and extracurricular opportunities aimed at preparing business students for future endeavors in business management and entrepreneurial environments.

The Harold Price Center is the division of Anderson responsible for overseeing all research, teaching, extracurricular and community activities related to entrepreneurial studies and preparation.

Students can elect to take several courses aimed at entrepreneurial ventures, such as small business management, financing emerging enterprises and business plan writing. Students can also take part in conducting field studies with entrepreneurial firms.

The Center also offers many opportunities for students to get involved in entrepreneurial-related subjects, said Kindra Liedtke, Anderson School program manager.

Furthermore, the largest student organization at the business school is the Entrepreneur Association, which has over 540 members. The association sponsors numerous extracurricular activities aimed at introducing students into an entrepreneurial environment and opening opportunities for students to get involved with entrepreneurs and business developers.

Some programs the association sponsors include Entrepreneur in Residence, where entrepreneurs are invited to join students and faculty for a day, Think Tank, where entrepreneurs from the UCLA Anderson School meet, collaborate and share ideas about entrepreneurship, and Women in Entrepreneurship, which is a supportive and educational forum for female entrepreneurs to strengthen business relations and connections.

In addition, the annual Entrepreneur Conference, which will be held in May this year, is a distinguished conference for the association where students, entrepreneurs, alumni and business executives meet for a day of seminars and discussions.

The goal of the conference is to provide students and entrepreneurs with insight into business skills, create a learning environment for students and connect business leaders and students, said Jeremy Milo, an Entrepreneurs Conference co-director.

Milo emphasized the beneficial environment the conference offered for students to connect with impressive business executives.

“It is a good opportunity for students to have high-quality interaction with entrepreneurs that have had success themselves,” Milo said.

With over 350 attendees each year, the conference is a day of networking, discussions and education aimed at helping students and future entrepreneurs learn to build successful organizations and learn from the experiences of accomplished business leaders.

The conference is now entering its 20th year, and past keynote speakers include Yahoo CEO Terry Semel and Paul Orfalea, founder and chairman emeritus of Kinko’s.

In addition to being ranked first in entrepreneurship among full-time business programs, the Anderson School is ranked 26th in business schools internationally, and the faculty was ranked fifth among 100 schools globally.

“FT’s high ranking (No. 5) of our faculty research, our No. 1 faculty intellectual capital ranking in BusinessWeek, combined with our continued top FT ranking in entrepreneurship truly reflects the high quality of our faculty, students and alumni,” said Anderson Dean Bruce Willison in a 2005 press release.