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.

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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.

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Balicki and Elliott Second Chance Scholarship

by Jason Fielder

In 2023, CMU alumni Bob Balicki, ’79, and Gail Elliott, ’94, established the Balicki and Elliott Second Chance Scholarship. The award was set up to provide help to students seeking a degree in computer science who demonstrate financial need, are former foster children, are first-generation students, are sole-parents or from a sole-parent household, or who have documented adversity in their life that has been overcome.

“We’ve been in the (computer science) industry for many years and we’ve seen a lot of people that need some help,” Balicki said. “We ran across some people that had issues where if they were able to have a scholarship and get that little bit of extra help, it would’ve really been a big difference for them.”

Pushkal Kafley is this year’s recipient of the Balicki and Elliott Second Chance Scholarship. Kafley is a first-generation college student who was born in a refugee camp in Nepal and lived there for seven years before coming to the U.S.

Two scholarship donors pose for a photo with the student recipient standing between them. — Gail Elliott (left), Pushkal Kafley (center), and Bob Balicki (right) post at the 2024 Scholarship and Endowment Celebration.

“There was little to no technology there,” he said. “Then I came to America, which has abundant technology. That provided the spark to pursue computer science because computers are at the core of it all. I wanted to control them and know how to do that, so computer science is the perfect field.”

Kafley is set to graduate in December with a degree in computer science. He then plans to earn a master’s degree from CMU before entering the job market. He says the Balicki and Elliott Second Chance Scholarship has helped him financially and mentally.

“It really means a lot because it has lessened my financial burden and I know that real people out there believe in me,” Kafley said. “Not only in the financial sense but in the belief aspect. Someone believes in me enough to give me this money, so I should keep going harder, push even more than I do, to make their beliefs come true.”

To Balicki and Elliott, igniting Kafley’s future success means everything.

“That’s the idea,” Balicki said. “Making a difference in somebody that might not have that chance otherwise. If we’re able to do it, why not?”