
Start up
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.
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.
Are you interested in becoming an entrepreneur?
Every journey is unique. Explore the opportunities that interest you.
April 18-22, 2024, over 100 schools and almost a thousand students and coaches from all over the country are expected to attend the National Forensic Association’s national championship tournament. Events include impromptu, extemporaneous, persuasion, rhetorical criticism, informative, after dinner speaking, poetry interpretation, prose interpretation, dramatic interpretation, duo-dramatic interpretation, program oral interpretation, and Lincoln-Douglas debate.
This event is the culmination of the 2023-2024 competitive speech and debate season. Participants had to qualify for entry over the course of the regular season to attend this tournament. The season of intercollegiate speech competition starts in mid-September and rounds through March with colleges and universities all over the nation hosting invitational speech and debate tournaments.
Four preliminary rounds of competition in each of the individual speech events will take place to seed 24 students in each event for elimination rounds to determine national champions. Lincoln-Douglas debate will also be featured in the tournament.
Central Michigan is not only hosting but will have students entered in the competition. Additionally, students from our classes and possibly volunteers from campus and the community will be assisting with the hosting duties.
Explore special opportunities to learn new skills and travel the world.
Present your venture and win BIG at the New Venture Challenge.
Boost your entrepreneurial skills through our workshops, mentor meetups and pitch competitions.
Learn about the entrepreneurship makerspace on campus in Grawn Hall.
Present a 2-minute pitch at the Make-A-Pitch Competition and you could win prizes and bragging rights!
Connect with mentors and faculty who are here to support the next generation of CMU entrepreneurs.
Are you a CMU alum looking to support CMU student entrepreneurs? Learn how you can support or donate to the Entrepreneurship Institute.