School:Western Michigan University

Student innovation and entrepreneurship

The word Entreprenurship has been tossed around the campus of Western Michigan University for quite some time and they have a lot of great things going for them, there is talk of an Entrepreneurship Minor and Major coming soon from the Hayworth College of Business. This is coming down the pipe line hopefully for next school year. Also from the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering stand point they offer an Industrial and Entreprenual Engineering Degree as a Bachleor of Science. Which the students use and learn about how the Industrial Engineering tools can be used to make them become better Entrepreners. Also the college of Fine Arts has an Entreprenuership Extraviganza which helps students with Entrepreneurial workshops that are student centered and student driven. Through classes, workshops, collaborative projects, students have the oportunity to develop the skills needed to be succeeding in music career.

The Enterprenurship Club at WMU brings together entrepreneurs, students, faculty, and business executives in spirit of the group in contesxt to todays chaning global economy, the prurpose of the group is to bring anyone who has a passion for entrepreneurship together.

• Meetings / Speakers: The club meets to discuss entreprenurship matters and also bring in local entrepreneurs, to help them with ideas and how to achieve goals. :
• PITCH: Last year was the first ever PITCH which was put on by E-Club's advisor John Mueller. 

Faculty innovation and entrepreneurship

Innovation and Entrepreneurship has a lot of cross ties between the large distance that separates the Hayworth College of Business and the Engineering Campus known as Parkview Campus. This is sparated by a distance of about 5 miles with a bus ride for students without cars is around 20mins. The reason there are cross ties is there is a lot of the similar things happening at both campuses but neither are in communication with eachother at the student level. 

Interms of Innovation the college has a great group of professors in the Engineering department that try to push the students to the envelope of coming up with new ideas, Endowed Chairs for Innovation Dr. Steven Butt(Chair of Department), Dr. Tycho Fredericks, Dr. Bob White, and Dr. Azim Houshyar, have a classes called Entreprenual Engineering I, II, and III where the students are to come up with an idea of a product and learn how to model or produce a product in a facility. 

Entrepreneurship seems to follow the "B-School" where they have a great group of mentors and professors that help the students there expand Entreprenurs in their school. The push for Entreprneurship has come from the Dean of the "B-school" Kay Palan. She has put the team together with the Head of the Managment department of, Endowed Chairs for Entreprenurship,  Dr. Robert Landeros and his team of Entrepreneur in Residece, John Mueller, Barcley Johnson, and Laurel Ofstein. The all come from amazing Entreprenurship backgrounds. 

University technology transfer function

This is major place for WMU to improve upon because they are trying to get their feet off the ground there is more to go in this position. 

University-Industry collaboration

Western Michigan University's Engineering Campus is filled with senior design projects from each and every engineering disipline, from competeing in the "Chainless Compition" to redesiginging residence halls to accomidate more residents. The college is involved with a lot of student and company projects, companies include, Stryker, Hayworth, Parker Hannifin, Eaton Corp, Fabri-Kal, Denso and many more. This is two semesters worth of work that ends up with inviting the company sponsors and the Kalamazoo Community to the day long event each group has a 30min window to present their project with a written report is due to the college as well as the sponsor company. This year will be the 152 senior presentations.