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Build up your venture idea.
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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.
“Liminal Borders: New Works by Clinton Snider” on Display in Baber Room Gallery
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Thresholds and borders are spaces both fraught and charged with potential. This is true in the case of “Liminal Borders,” the aptly-titled exhibit of new paintings by Clinton Snider on display in the Baber Room Gallery from April 4-May 25. A painter long central to metro Detroit’s vibrant arts community, Snider’s gorgeous, haunting paintings capture the luminous hum of moments where past and future, nature and industry, merge. As Snider mentions, these works give one “the sensation of being first on the scene to witness a subtle drama about to unfold, or, perhaps, the last to arrive just after something occurred.” The drama is in the light: Snider’s palette evokes liminal temporality—a somehow both melancholic and hopeful wash of autumnal shades and long shadows gives the feeling of late day, of darkness woven with light. As viewers, we confront what landscape painting even is, or should be, in a time when discarded tires, shopping carts and shipping canisters flow downstream with leaves, where broken cement blocks rest amidst flowing grasses and flowers, and where vines and roots wind through windowless, long-abandoned structures. Snider’s masterful skill with color and depth are on full-display here, in work that guides our eyes, but also invites us to look closer, to notice a pink-fringed sky ablaze in a mirrored stream, a cloud embraced in the oxbow of a river. In a world so broken, so polluted with noise and detritus, we daily ask: is beauty even still possible? If you cross the threshold into the Baber Room Gallery and bask in the paintings of Clinton Snider, trust me, you’ll know the answer.
CMU Libraries will host an artist talk and reception with Clinton Snider on April 13th at 7pm in the Baber Room Gallery. The event is free and open to all.
Signature Programs
Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship
Explore special opportunities to learn new skills and travel the world.
Compete & Win
New Venture Challenge 2025
Present your venture and win BIG at the New Venture Challenge.
Build your skills
Workshops and events
Boost your entrepreneurial skills through our workshops, mentor meetups and pitch competitions.
Develop your ideas
IDEA Den
Learn about the entrepreneurship makerspace on campus in Grawn Hall.
Ready, Set, Pitch!
Make-A-Pitch 2024
Present a 2-minute pitch at the Make-A-Pitch Competition and you could win prizes and bragging rights!
Meet Mentors
Mentorship and support
Connect with mentors and faculty who are here to support the next generation of CMU entrepreneurs.
Support students
Make an impact
Are you a CMU alum looking to support CMU student entrepreneurs? Learn how you can support or donate to the Entrepreneurship Institute.
View our programming newsletter
Alumni give back to students through mentorship, real-world experiences
The Wakeling Gendron Entrepreneurial Scholars program wrapped its first cohort this academic year.
Students compete to win cash prizes at the New Venture Challenge
Pitched 40 ventures at NMV Challenge, Friday, April 19, CMU. Judges awarded $100,000 in cash prizes.
Wakeling Gendron Scholars make a life-changing trip to Texas
Wakeling and Gendron Scholars attended SXSW in Texas, meeting industry leaders and gaining entrepreneurial insights.
Business barriers lead CMU students to a new venture
Justin Ashman and Philip Mundt won Central Michigan University's New Venture Competition with their 3-D printing operation, Form Further.
