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.

2025 NVC Competition Live Stream

2025 NVC Awards Live Stream

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.

A student standing with a faculty member holding big winning checks from the New Venture Challenge 2024.

Start up

Build up your venture idea.

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A student smiling and standing in front of his venture display at the 2024 New Venture Challenge.

Family business

Explore the Alternative Entrepreneurial Pathways category at NVC.

Learn more

A close-up of the Prusa i3 MK3 printer in the entrepreneurship makerspace, the IDEA Den in Grawn Hall 166.

Product and prototype design

Create and patent your ideas.

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Innovation

Explore your ideas and build your skills.

Learn more

No passport needed, travel through classroom technology

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As technology progresses at the speed of light, educators are working hard to integrate the latest advancements into their classrooms and use them to engage their students. Yesterday's laptop carts have become today's classrooms full of iPads, but what will tomorrow bring? While that may be up for debate, it's clear that it will continue to encourage connections and help students push themselves. Below are three possible developments and how they can take your classroom to the next level.

Exploring education with AR and VR

Augmented reality and virtual reality, AR and VR respectively, have taken the technology market by storm. While wildly popular for gaming, AR and VR have very practical applications in classrooms.

AR can bring textbooks to life. See how the heart pumps blood through the body and how organs and muscles move with intricate detail. It also would be excellent for visual explanations of the large concepts of small particles. Students can observe how elements combine to create compounds rather than reading it in a textbook.

In classrooms where VR is used in lessons, it can take students to places and times they're studying. VR can show students the Egyptian civilization, how they lived and how the pyramids were built. In higher education, VR can put medical students in the operating room or at a physical exam table to fully understand how the body works.

Inviting Alexa, Siri and Google into your classroom

"Hey Siri," "Alexa," and "OK, Google," are now part of your everyday vocabulary. It may not be long until voice assistants make their way into classrooms and start playing a more active role in academics.

Voice assistants can provide a unique way of learning and engaging students. Students can ask questions and learn about different types of responses. They can practice speaking and listening skills.

Imagine educators being able to incorporate voice assistants into program review and study preparation. Imagine students asking Alexa or Google to help them prepare for an upcoming test and being walked through questions or vocabulary terms they need to know.

Videoconferencing to connect classrooms and students

Videoconferencing gives students and educators the ability to connect with others all around the world. It also presents the opportunity for collaboration. Educators can coordinate a science experiment that one or both classes can conduct over videoconferencing.

Videoconferencing is also a great way to interact with your class's subject material. You could conference with the author of a book your students read. They can discuss his or her writing process and thoughts behind certain aspects of the text.

To keep up with technology and learn valuable ways to integrate it into your classroom, isn't it time to continue your own education and prepare for what tomorrow's classroom will be? Central Michigan University has a wide variety of education programs taught online and designed for working teachers. Whether you want to deepen your skills or learn new techniques, you can do it with CMU's master and doctoral programs in education technology.