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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.

      Site search powered by Google coming to cmich.edu

      by User Not Found
      Since the launch of the new cmich.edu, Central Michigan's digital strategy team has worked diligently to bring improved search functionality to users of the site. Those efforts pay off this February with the rollout of Google Programmable Search.
       
      "While we've spent considerable time working with our implementation partners to improve our current search solution, it became clear that it was not meeting our community’s needs,” Vice President for University Communications and Chief Marketing Officer John Veilleux said. “So we asked ourselves, ‘who does search better than Google?’ The answer is no one. We began implementing this Google-enhanced search solution last November and are seeing far better results across the board.” 
       
      Kiera Davenport, director of digital strategy, said the quality assurance and user testing completed on the new Google Search option confirms that assessment.
       
      “This update will make information easy to find and lead to a better overall experience for all users of the CMU website,” Davenport said.
       
      Google Programmable Search:
       
      • Features Google's core search technology/algorithm.
      • Better understands users' intentions, including misspellings.
      • Provides the experience and performance users expect from the world’s most widely used search engine.
      Additional enhancements related to site search include:
       
      • The number of filters has been reduced to two; People and Programs.
      • Users no longer have to scroll past filters to get to search results.
      • Greater improvement in result rankings from the search engine optimization efforts of page authors.
      Associate director of digital content Lauren Sawyer said continuous improvement is the philosophy that guides how the digital strategy team approaches its work on the CMU website.
       
      “Delivering a world-class solution for site search has been on the top of our list of ideas for making user experiences better,” Sawyer said. “It feels great to provide that for all CMU stakeholders and cmich.edu visitors.”

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      Questions?

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