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Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship
We empower entrepreneurial thinkers—whether you’re launching a venture, building a family business, creating social impact, or driving innovation inside an organization. Turn ideas into action.
Start your entrepreneurial journey
At Central Michigan University, the Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship is more than a program—it’s where students from every major turn ideas into real impact. As Michigan’s first Department of Entrepreneurship, we’re a hub for hands-on learning, innovation, and mentorship.
Here, you’ll:
- Build an entrepreneurial mindset that sets you apart in any career path—launching ventures, shaping social missions, advancing family businesses, or driving innovation inside established companies.
- Collaborate across disciplines to create projects that matter.
- Learn from alumni, faculty, and industry leaders who’ve built their own paths.
- Gain real-world experience through workshops, hackathons, and pitch competitions.
- Compete in the New Venture Challenge, where students win up to $10,000 in cash and grants to grow their ideas.
Whether you want to start something new or transform what already exists, the Institute is your launchpad.
Take the next step!
When you’re ready to get started, stop by Grawn 164 to join the team or visit the Idea Den in Grawn 166—your space to brainstorm, build, and take the next step.
Questions?
Mary Gibson, a graduate student in the biology department, is studying black-footed ferrets and their mating habits. Black-footed ferrets, once of the most endangered animals in North America, have been bred largely in captivity since the 1980s. There is a gap in existing knowledge about the mating habits of these ferrets that Gibson hopes her research can help fill. Gibson is conducting her research on a reintroduced, self-sustaining population of ferrets in South Dakota, meaning the ferrets are observed, but not technically in captivity.
Currently, captive breeding programs use a monogamous approach, where one female mates with one male in an attempt to preserve genetic diversity. However, as research on the black-footed ferret did not begin until they were essentially extinct, it is unclear whether monogamy represents ferret mating behavior in the wild. Gibson is evaluating mating behavior using DNA fingerprinting to determine paternity, similar to paternity testing in humans.
Gibson’s preliminary results suggest that monogamous breeding is not typical to the species. Her current findings suggest many females in the wild South Dakota population have mixed paternity litters, meaning females bred with multiple male ferrets. If this mating style is reflective of the species, this could lead to a change in the current breeding program strategies, as this style of mating leads to greater genetic diversity in the population.
While Gibson has only been working the black-footed ferrets for 8 months, she has been focused on genetics and species conservation throughout her academic career. “I personally am very interested in how much you can learn and the variety of questions you can address through genetics,” says Gibson. “I've always been interested in wildlife disease, so this project even has an aspect of that environmental pressure.” Gibson is still in the active stages of her research but hopes to publish her work upon its completion.
This story is brought to you by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies.