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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 receives internship from National Science Foundation

      by Henry Heller

      Shashwat Maharjan, a graduate student studying mechanical engineering, received an internship funded by the National Science Foundation to study geothermal energy. The goal of Maharjan’s research is to predict the natural state temperature of subsurface geothermal reservoirs, reducing costs in decision-making during the geothermal resource exploration phase. 

      Maharjan explains, “You have a potential source and drill a hole or well into it. Since you have disturbed the potential source, it takes time [to heat back up] because the well has now been exposed to outside fluids and atmosphere.” In the U.S., wells may take two to three months to reheat, which is why decision-making during this exploration phase is so crucial to reducing wasted potential and money. Each day on standby at the rigs could cost tens of thousands of dollars.  

      To study the reservoirs, Maharjan is using simulation data to create and evaluate models of this system. Recently, he received data from Contact Energy, a large geothermal operator in New Zealand. His next steps are to test his machine learning models against real-world reservoirs to see if the models accurately predict temperatures. 

      Maharjan is grateful to CMU for hosting his research endeavors. During his undergraduate application, he was originally going to be attending another institution. However, Marharjan changed his mind after CMU offered him a scholarship. Maharjan expresses his gratitude, saying, “With the internship, it involves a lot of time and effort from all parties, for just one student. The professors, Dean, ORGS, and Geologica Geothermal Group have put in so much effort, just for me. […] This really shows how much people care about graduate students at CMU.” 

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

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