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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.

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

      Grad student maps out the technology timeline of the U.S.

      by Henry Heller

      Nathaniel Gonzalez, a graduate student studying history, is researching how technology impacted Americans in the twentieth century. Gonzalez is investigating the history of culture and ideas in America from 1950 to 2005 using books and movies and the scholarly articles published about them. 

      The goal of Gonzalez’s research is to establish technology as a “significant historical factor” in scholarly conversations surrounding the contemporary intellectual history of the United States. Gonzalez also hopes his research will be helpful in discussions of new technologies, like ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot which has gained attention for its detailed responses on a variety of subject areas.  

      Gonzalez says, “I want to see the public's thoughts about each decade’s technology. […] From the 1970s to the present, the public has favored soft sci-fi. They usually only like books or movies without much intellectual depth and have mixed feelings about technological progress. There is a wide gap between the sci-fi the everyday American consumes and that consumed by [technologically savvy individuals].” 

      In his research, Gonzalez has found varying degrees of positive and negative opinions on technology. Gonzalez says, “There have been those who have been highly confident that technology will eventually fix everything, those who have held very negative views about how technology has or will affect society, and just about everything in between.” However, many Americans seem to accept the new technology which is becoming widely available to the public.  

      This story is brought to you by the  Office of Research and Graduate Studies.

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