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.

2025 NVC Competition Live Stream

2025 NVC Awards Live Stream

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.

A student standing with a faculty member holding big winning checks from the New Venture Challenge 2024.

Start up

Build up your venture idea.

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A student smiling and standing in front of his venture display at the 2024 New Venture Challenge.

Family business

Explore the Alternative Entrepreneurial Pathways category at NVC.

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A close-up of the Prusa i3 MK3 printer in the entrepreneurship makerspace, the IDEA Den in Grawn Hall 166.

Product and prototype design

Create and patent your ideas.

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Innovation

Explore your ideas and build your skills.

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Clarke Historical Library Speaker Series presents: Derek H. Alderman

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Derek H. Alderman What’s in a name? A great deal if you live, work, or study on a university campus in America. In response to intense protests, university officials are often called upon to remove the names of racist historical figures from campus spaces. These calls, like broader place renaming struggles across the nation and the globe, have evoked wide-ranging institutional responses—from resistance and performative gestures to more meaningful changes.

The Clarke Historical Library Speaker Series, and Events for Spring 2023 presents Derek H. Alderman on Monday, February 13. Join us for an online event that begins at 7:00 p.m. Registration is required, and you can register for this event at Clarke.cmich.edu/SpeakerSeries. 

In his talk, “Teaching for Place Name Change on University Campuses: On Being Reflexive, Reparative, and Regenerative,” University of Tennessee Professor of Geography Derek H. Alderman will consider college classrooms as important workspaces for critiquing traditional place naming practices and developing the civic imagination necessary to plan an inclusive and just campus geography. He will offer three frameworks for students to interrogate named spaces within their own universities (landscape backstories, affective entanglements, and procedural justice)—all with the hope of institutions of higher learning becoming more reflexive, reparative, and regenerative in how they name and make places. 

Learn more about all the Clarke’s Spring 2023 speakers and events at clarke.cmich.edu/SpeakerSeries

This event is free and open to the public. Individuals needing accommodations should contact the Clarke at clarke@cmich.edu or by phone at 989-774-3864.