TROY, N.Y. -- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute senior Cody Kline will graduate from the prestigious university this spring. After walking the stage, the business major will move back home to Massachusetts to work for a business consulting firm in Boston.

"I'm excited to go through the training process and get into the real world with a good head on my shoulders," Kline said.

Kline is one of many who have studied at RPI's Lally School of Management.

"You feel like they care about you, and they do," she said.

Lally School of Management has been ranked one of the best business schools in the country by a number of national publications. It recently was re-accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business; a distinction held by only 5 percent of business schools in the world. Locally, University at Albany and Siena College also hold the accreditation.

"We [RPI] have such a good business school; we're just hidden under the big engineering school," said Kline. "I think having this accreditation really helps, because it makes us stand, and we should."

"The whole environment here at Rensselaer encourages people to think about breakthrough technologies and breakthrough businesses," said Lally School of Management Dean Thomas Begley. "Our students interact with students from the rest of the campus."

The Lally School of Management has a deep focus on entrepreneurship. It also has a center devoted to helping students start their own businesses even before they graduate.

"They get coaching, they get mentorship, they get connections to entrepreneurs," Dean Begley said.

In its more than 50-year history, the Lally School of Management has taught some of the most successful local business leaders, including the creators of MapInfo, which inspired current day GPS, as well as a number of graduates who started companies you saw on the Capital Region Business Bea,t from companies such as Ecovative, Vital Vio, ToneTree, and more.

Dean Begley said there's more where those came from.

"I think it's a pretty high probability that we're going to be developing some of the real breakthrough businesses into the future," he said.

Kline hopes to start a businesses one day with all she learned during her time at RPI.

"It really did prepare me, and I loved that I'm where I am, and wouldn't have done anything differently," she said.

She said she'll use the inspiration she received from her mother, a successful CEO, to live that dream.

"Follow that path and take it one step at a time, and I'll get there," she said.

If you know a business that should be featured on the Capital Region Business Beat, submit an email to Jon.Dougherty@twcnews.com. For more local business news, follow Jon on Twitter: @JonDTWCNews.