When Adam Johs was a student at the University of Iowa, he knew he wanted to eventually start a business. But he also knew he didn’t want to take the management courses and other requirements in a traditional business-school curriculum.

Instead, the 23-year-old chose the university’s new enterprise-leadership major, offered through the liberal-arts college. He took courses like psychology and creative writing—in which he wrote about his own life and came to understand his career goals better, he says.

Then, on the business side, he took classes in managing a growth business and professional preparation for entrepreneurship.

“The mix has been enjoyable,” says Mr. Johs, who graduated in December and runs his own landscaping business.

A handful of schools across the country are trying to appeal to students like Mr. Johs—those who are interested in entrepreneurship but don’t want to major in business. The schools are creating new degree programs that let students take the bulk of their classes in the major they want—such as liberal arts or engineering—but blend in business courses to give them a grounding in running their own company.

“There’s an overall attempt to get more nonbusiness students involved” in an entrepreneurship program, says Michael Morris, a professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs.

Keeping students in place

One of the big motivations behind these new offerings is to bolster majors like liberal arts—which have been losing students to more career-focused business programs in recent years. Schools hope the blended majors will make students more comfortable staying in nonbusiness disciplines, while still ensuring they learn marketable business skills.

At the same time, business programs are recognizing that students need fundamental skills such as writing, creative thinking and social psychology that usually aren’t the focus of business courses—but are the mainstay of other majors.

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At the University of Iowa, the business school worked with the college of liberal arts to launch the college’s enterprise-leadership major in 2015. Liberal-arts students take some practical business courses—including small-business accounting and business planning—but skip many classes that often don’t appeal to nonbusiness students, such as negotiation and human-resource management. Instead, there are classes that offer less-traditional lessons in leadership, such as advocacy and social psychology.

Enterprise leadership is one of the fastest-growing undergraduate majors, says David Hensley, executive director of the university’s John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center. He says there are now 688 students taking the major, up from 206 in the fall of 2015.

The major was originally aimed at students who were rejected by the business school, but it now also bolsters the liberal-arts programs by keeping some students from decamping to the business school altogether, says Helena Dettmer, a former undergraduate dean and professor at the university. “We were pleasantly surprised,” she says.

Diverse backgrounds

Lander University in Greenwood, S.C., refocused an existing bachelor of arts program to include more courses on entrepreneurship so it could be easier for students outside the business school interested in creative careers to build a viable business, says Michael Brizek, a professor at Lander’s college of business. For instance, students take courses including the legal environment of business and management of small and family businesses.

Mixing students from different majors helps entrepreneurship courses become fertile ground for innovation, says Alexander McKelvie, professor of entrepreneurship at Syracuse University. For instance, a business-school class at the school formed a team that included a business major and a student from the school of information studies who also took the class. The group launched Smarta, a system that makes it easier for multifamily-property owners to find students to rent off-campus housing.

The class “allowed students to recognize different perspectives and approaches to issues and industries,” Prof. McKelvie adds.

Ms. Dizik is a writer in Chicago. She can be reached at reports@wsj.com.