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Initiative: CENTER For Entrepreneurship
Location: Richmond, Indiana

Sparking New Business Growth
in Richmond

Center for Entrepreneurship is giving students and the economy a boost

Hoping to help revitalize the Richmond economy and enhance opportunities for students and local businesspeople, Indiana University East created a Center for Entrepreneurship on campus in 2005. The center was partially funded by proceeds from the campus’s “Campaign for Community,” which raised $2 million dollars.

“Our region has been noted for higher than state and national levels for unemployment,” says the center’s director, business lecturer Tim Scales, adding that the region was once known for its early innovation in the areas of jazz recording, baked goods, and lawn mower and casket manufacturing, among others. Most of these industries have moved away or vanished from the area, and the Center for Entrepreneurship offers students and the community members a chance to connect and create new businesses.

“This is one more way that IU East can add value to the region’s economic development efforts,” said IU East Interim Chancellor Nasser Paydar. “It’s important that the university take a leadership role in creating a more attractive environment for individuals and businesses to invest and grow.”

Exceeding Expectations

The center has exceeded expectations. It is already improving the quality of life in Richmond, where it works with IU East students and community members through an entrepreneurship minor, individual meetings, lectures, workshops, and a bimonthly television program produced on campus called “In Your Business” that showcases local entrepreneurs and reaches approximately 20,000 households per program. The center worked with about 200 students and 100 community members in 2007.

“We assist individuals in understanding the difference between becoming an entrepreneur as opposed to being an employee or creating a job rather than taking a job,” says Scales.

Scales hosts “In Your Business” and filmed several episodes of the program in India, where he recently traveled with three IU East students to lecture at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai. In January 2007, he traveled to Mexico to help start an entrepreneurship program.

Connecting Students and Local Business Leaders

The center also sponsors the campus chapter of Students in Free Enterprise (the global nonprofit organization that gives students a chance to showcase their work at national competitions) and links entrepreneurship students with local businesses for projects and internships that offer real-world experience. Area business leaders frequently serve as mentors and advisors for projects and competitions.

Be Your Own BOSS—Five Students Created New Businesses

One of the center’s most successful new programs is “Business Opportunities for Self-Starters” (BOSS), a summer immersion entrepreneurship program Scales created for high school students that teaches students to write and present their own business plans. Students from nine counties participated in the most recent BOSS program.

“I’m very proud of last summer’s program,” says Scales. Of the 156 students who applied to the summer 2007 BOSS program, 115 were accepted, and 111 final business plans were completed. Five of the students actually used their plans to start business in the area (in Richmond, Winchester, Newcastle, and two between Newcastle and Muncie): a custom guitar shop, a blacksmith, a dressmaker, a bakery, and a business that builds Web sites and sets up computer networks.

Jim Dinkle, president and CEO of the Wayne County Economic Development Council, was a judge for the summer 2007 BOSS program, and he was impressed by what he saw. “It’s a superb program. Many of the plans I saw presented by those students were as well-written and well-presented as the ones I’ve seen by adults in my 20-plus-year career,” says Dinkle. “It spoke volumes about the work IU East and Tim Scales had done.”

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