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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Thinking Out Loud On Display in the Baber Room

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Person in the Baber Room Gallery looking at the Brian Nelson Exhibition

If you’ve walked through Park Library recently, you may have seen people peering curiously through the Baber Room windows. On one wall, a steel “cloud” hangs, emerging from an oxygen tank. In a corner, the neon word CURE eerily hums away on the floor. Near that piece stands a cracked plaster statue of Mary with a tube inserted her stomach leading to a cluster of melted glass jars. These are just few of the mesmerizing works by Michigan artist Brian Nelson in “Thinking Out Loud,” an installation on display until February 1^st, that includes sculptures and works on paper.

Nelson is known for rendering complex examinations of contemporary life into sculpture and for impeccable craftsmanship. For example, that stainless steel surface employed as a pedestal that looks like a surgeon’s table? He fabricated that, too. All around the gallery, in fact, nothing is as it first seems; what looks like a plastic gas tank one could easily lift, is actually cast in bronze. An abstract drawing, up close, is actually a virus.

Several pieces resonate with the austere exterior of technology and medicine. Linger, though, and you’ll feel their resonant humanity. “My work is reflecting on my experiences,” Nelson said, though he hopes “every viewer will see the work through their own histories.” And it’s true. Visitors who look closer and who spend time immersed in the installation will be most rewarded.

Brian Nelson will give an artist talk at 6:30 pm on Thursday, January 19 in Park Libraries’ Sarah and Daniel Opperman Auditorium, free and open to the public.