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Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship

We are a dedicated institute for student entrepreneurs across campus and beyond. We aim to maximize your success by fostering your entrepreneurial mindset, promote inter-disciplinary collaboration and provide support for the creation and development of your new ventures. Jumpstart your ideas and get involved today!

Tune in for excitement!

Passion. Potential. Pitches. Don't miss any of the 2025 New Venture Challenge excitement.

Tune in Friday, April 11 at 1 p.m. for great ideas and fierce competition. Then, join the judges, mentors, spectators and teams as they see who is going home with thousands of dollars in venture financing. The awards broadcast begins at 6:30 p.m. and one team will walk away as the overall best venture. 

Start your entrepreneurial journey

Central Michigan University’s College of Business Administration is the home of the Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship and the first Department of Entrepreneurship in the state of Michigan. We are a student-centric hub where experiential, curricular, and external entrepreneurial opportunities intersect.

Our mission is to maximize student success by fostering a campus-wide entrepreneurial mindset that promotes inter-disciplinary collaboration and the creation of new ventures.

We aim to create innovative programming, boost cross-campus and ecosystem collaboration and provide a comprehensive mentoring program.

Our institute provides extracurricular opportunities and is open to all undergraduate and graduate CMU students.

Student opportunities

  • Meet experienced alumni, faculty, entrepreneurs, investors, and other business and political leaders.
  • Learn practical skills, innovative thinking, and connect with mentors and entrepreneurial resources.
  • Attend skill-building workshops and compete in pitch competitions and Hackathons.
  • Take part in special scholarship programs and travel experiences.
  • Pitch your venture at our signature New Venture Challenge event and compete for up to $20,000 in cash awards.

      Find your path

      Are you interested in becoming an entrepreneur?

      Every journey is unique. Explore the opportunities that interest you.

      AI: Pattern recognition instead of human values

      by User Not Found

      The evolution of artificial intelligence could lead to a place where people develop emotional attachments to non-living things even as we don’t understand how those things arrive at their conclusions, according to a member of Central Michigan University’s faculty.

      That creates a risk in using AI to do things where human values are helpful tools, CMU philosophy faculty member Matt Katz said during the recording of a recent episode of The Search Bar. At the end of the day, they are machines.

      “It’s just pattern recognition,” he said. “It doesn’t feel anything.”

      While AI can be trained to identify objects like fish in a tank or tumors in medical scans, the processes of how it interprets these patterns are not fully understood.

      That means not knowing for certain how an AI might draw a conclusion if asked to determine which prisoners are paroled or what job candidates move to the next hiring round.

      The challenge of comprehending these processes is likely to become more difficult as the technology’s sophistication increases. The more human they seem, the more likely it is that people could forget that they’re pattern-recognition machines.

      People could also develop emotional attachments to them, which is even more plausible as machines learn to provide answers with elements that resemble emotions, Katz said.

      For more thoughts on artificial intelligence from Matt Katz, check out the “What are the ethical concerns with AI?” episode of The Search Bar.

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