
Start up
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.
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.
Are you interested in becoming an entrepreneur?
Every journey is unique. Explore the opportunities that interest you.
It’s no secret that handwashing is an incredibly undervalued, “forgotten,” and incorrectly performed procedure despite its proven efficacy in protecting people from disease. In fact, practicing good personal hygiene - including handwashing - is revered as the number one prevention mechanism for several of the most contagious and symptomatic foodborne illnesses, like Norovirus, Hepatitis A, and Shigellosis.
Since people cannot avoid food, it is vital to practice proper, consistent handwashing. Here are five helpful handwashing tips to keep people and their kitchens safe year-round:
Simply washing one’s hands before and after cooking will not cut it. While cooking, hands should be washed after using the restroom, touching the body or clothing, eating or drinking, using electronic devices, and handling raw meat, among other things. Long story short, hands should be washed whenever a food handler changes tasks, leaves the kitchen, or handles raw food.
When washing hands, it is important to scrub all parts of the hands and wrists, including underneath fingernails, between fingers, and around cuticles. Furthermore, jewelry and watches worn on the wrists should be removed before cooking and handwashing. Pathogens can easily hide in the crevasses of hands, nails, and jewelry. When people ignore these tricky areas, those hidden pathogens can still spread and contaminate food.
When done properly, handwashing should take at least 20 seconds, 10 to 15 of which should be specifically spent scrubbing with soap. To ensure the 20-second requirement is fulfilled, try singing/humming the “Happy Birthday” song twice while handwashing.
Despite its claims of killing 99.99% of germs, hand sanitizer is NOT an appropriate substitute for handwashing. However, there is still a place for hand sanitizer in the kitchen. When used after proper handwashing, hand sanitizer can help further reduce the number of pathogens on the skin to safe levels.
Warmer water helps to better remove pathogens from the skin. When handwashing, water should be at least 100F, or slightly warmer than body/skin temperature. Although it may take a few extra seconds for water to warm up when the faucet is turned on, the reduced risk of foodborne illness is worth those few seconds. When drying hands, the friction produced by paper towels also helps to reduce the presence of viruses on the skin.
Handwashing is one of the easiest ways to protect against foodborne illnesses. But in order to reap its benefits, people must be deliberate about proper handwashing. With Global Handwashing Day on October 15, now is the perfect time to make proper handwashing and protection from foodborne illness a lifelong force of habit.
Samantha Towers is a junior in the dietetics program at Central Michigan University. To learn more about the Nutrition and Dietetics program and course offerings, please contact program director Dr. Najat Yahia at yahia1n@cmich.edu.
Explore special opportunities to learn new skills and travel the world.
Present your venture and win BIG at the New Venture Challenge.
Boost your entrepreneurial skills through our workshops, mentor meetups and pitch competitions.
Learn about the entrepreneurship makerspace on campus in Grawn Hall.
Present a 2-minute pitch at the Make-A-Pitch Competition and you could win prizes and bragging rights!
Connect with mentors and faculty who are here to support the next generation of CMU entrepreneurs.
Are you a CMU alum looking to support CMU student entrepreneurs? Learn how you can support or donate to the Entrepreneurship Institute.