Back to Main Menu

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.

      Great Lakes invaded: Invasive species jump canal

      by Henry Heller

      Sethu Mettukulam Jagadeesan has recently completed his Thesis project for his Master of Science in Computer Science. The project “Developing an Efficient and Effective Pipeline to Support Surveillance of Unintended Passage in Riverine Environments” is using a program they created to identify invasive species of fish who are jumping across the fish pass, a barrier between the Michigan Great Lakes and canals to the Atlantic Ocean. 

      They do this by setting up cameras to take pictures along the canal. The program uses artificial intelligence to learn the behaviors of the fish and eventually determine its species.  

      Right now, the program is able to detect and capture photographs of the fish but currently cannot determine what type of fish it is. They hope with the use of many images as a data set the program will learn to detect and inform someone of any invasive species. 

      This project was suggested and supported by Jesse Eickholt, PhD, as Sethu’s supervisor and Sethu has a lot of gratitude towards his project group members Johnathan Gregory, who helped build the model, and Jordan Elizabeth Leh, who helped with the research. 

      In the future, Sethu hopes that once the program is able to fully identify the species of fish, the program will become open-source and free for use for anyone in similar studies or anyone who wants to know what goes on with these invasive fish. 

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

      Events

      VIEW ALL EVENTS
      VIEW ALL EVENTS

       

      View our programming newsletter

      Entrepreneurship News

      Questions?

      Contact the team