Picking the Right NMC Courses If You Want to Build a Tech Company Here

Someone asked me last week what they should study at NMC if the goal is to eventually start a tech company in Traverse City, not just get hired by one. Fair question, and the honest answer is that NMC doesn't sell an "entrepreneurship" degree you can just enroll in. Checking the full list of degrees and certificates, what you actually have is a set of building blocks under Computer Information Technology and Business Administration — and the trick is combining them on purpose instead of picking one track and hoping.

Here's how I'd think about it.

Start with CIT, and pick a lane deliberately. NMC's Computer Information Technology program splits into two degrees: CIT Developer, which gets you into Python, JavaScript, HTML5/CSS3 and building real web, desktop, and database applications, and CIT Infrastructure & Security, which covers networking, systems administration, and cybersecurity. If you're planning to build the product yourself — an MVP, a prototype, the thing you'll eventually pitch at TCNewTech — Developer is the obvious pick. If your idea leans more toward security tooling, IT services, or managed infrastructure, Infrastructure & Security fits better. Either way, you don't need both to start; you need to actually finish and ship things using one of them.

Don't skip Business Administration just because it sounds unglamorous. The AAS in Business Administration covers office management, customer service, and quality control — not thrilling on paper, but it's also where you pick up the operational skills that kill more startups than bad code does: bookkeeping, contracts, hiring, and the internship requirement that forces you out of the classroom and into an actual local business before you're running your own. NMC's own data on the program lists marketing, business development, sales management, and CRM as the core hard skills — every one of those is a gap I've watched technical founders fall into.

Treat Communications as a skill class, not a distribution requirement. You will eventually have to pitch investors, write a landing page, explain your product to someone who isn't technical, and stand in front of a room at TCNewTech. NMC's Communications program exists to make that less terrifying. It's not a founder-specific program, but the skill transfers directly.

None of this is a substitute for actually building something. The July TCNewTech cohort I wrote about was proof of that — Score Canvas, Little Loop, Ride Cave, squarefoot.earth — none of those founders were waiting on a diploma to start. But if you're choosing classes right now and want them to point somewhere, CIT Developer plus Business Administration, with a Communications course or two mixed in, is the closest thing NMC has to a tech-founder track. Add the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute or Marine Technology program to that mix if you're aiming at the BlueTech wave the Freshwater Research & Innovation Center is about to pull into town — that's a domain where NMC's coursework and Traverse City's actual economic strategy line up almost perfectly.

Two years, four programs' worth of electives, one real internship. That's the path.