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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.

      Course’s final project focuses on pandemic

      by Sanjna Jassi
      CMU faculty member Diane Krider has created a final project for her crisis communications students related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

      Central Michigan University Department of Communication faculty member Diane Krider realized the opportunity for students in her "Crisis Communications" course to learn from firsthand experience. What better way to study crisis response than living through one?

      Rather than completing the course's typical final project of a student-run press conference, she is focusing entirely on applying the course materials (theory and practice) to what is happening in real time with the coronavirus.

      "Only until we start to put the pieces together of how a crisis of this magnitude unfolded and paralyzed the world, will we truly understand the importance of effective crisis communication when managing this pandemic," Krider said.

      As case studies are the heart and soul of discussions about crisis communication, students now have a front-row seat because they are living amid a case study that will be used when teaching crisis communication for generations to come.

      This bird's-eye view of how the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded and sent an entire nation into a crisis is the focus for their final projects. Students are reading, watching and analyzing the crisis communication strategies and messaging used on national, state, local and university (CMU) levels to be able to identify crisis stages, effective and ineffective messaging, effectively managing crisis uncertainty, learning through failure, and more.

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