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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.

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      Every journey is unique. Explore the opportunities that interest you.

      Biology graduate student studies territoriality in fish

      by Henry Heller

      Olivia Buzinski, a graduate student studying biology, studied territoriality in fish to see how it modifies oxidative damage in the brain. Buzinski’s model for this project was a social cichlid fish, which forms social hierarchies with dominant males defending territories.  

      In the project, male fish were placed on each side of a tank separated by a clear divider.   Male territories were established such that sometimes the territories were closer to the divider and sometimes farther away. Buzinski's prediction that higher levels of territoriality would occur when the territories were closer together was supported by finding an increase in aggressive behaviors under these conditions. In the future, Buzinski will use immunohistochemistry to label markers of oxidative damage in the brain for comparison to territoriality and androgen levels. 

      Buzinski began studying this concept in Biology Professor Peter Dijkstra, Ph.D.’s lab after Dijkstra received a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how androgens impact oxidative damage. With this, Buzinski chose to study territoriality which involves aggression because aggression is linked to testosterone, a type of androgen.  

      Previously, Buzinski worked in labs with Biology faculty Thomas Gehring, Ph.D., and Daelyn Woolnough, Ph.D., as an undergraduate student. In Dijkstra's lab, Buzinski is working with undergraduate students to replicate the experiment to increase the sample size. 

      This story is brought to you by the  Office of Research and Graduate Studies.

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