School:Western Michigan University

Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship

While the word Entrepreneurship has been tossed around Western Michigan University's campus for quite some time, it has only recently become a reality for WMU students. As of fall 2014, students can apply for either the Entrepreneurship major orEntrepreneurship minor. These programs feature classes from both the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences (CEAS) and the Haworth College of Business (HCoB).

Within CEAS, students can enroll in the Bachelors of Science in Engineering program entitled Industrial & Entrepreneurial Engineering (IEE). IEE combines traditional industrial engineering methodologies while focusing on innovation and design thinking. Students graduate with the mindset of both an industrial engineer and an entrepreneur, giving them the knowledge and expertise to either open their own business or to lead to innovative discoveries within established companies.

Within the Haworth College of Business, Integrated Supply Management program features an array of courses highlighting the importance of innovation and design. As of fall 2014, the program was ranked #5 in the nation.

Additionally, the College of Fine Arts has an Entrepreneurship Extravaganza, complete with student-centered and student-driven workshops on entrepreneurship.

Through classes, workshops, and collaborative projects, students have the opportunity to develop the skills needed to be successful in their music career.

The Entrepreneurship Club at WMU brings together entrepreneurs, students, faculty, and business executives in the spirit of group innovation to help adapt their skills to today's changing global economy. The purpose of the group is to bring together anyone who has a passion for entrepreneurship through networking and brainstorming with fellow students. 

• Meetings / Speakers: The club meets to discuss entrepreneurship matters and also bring in local entrepreneurs, to help them with ideas and how to achieve goals. Former club president Matt Rumora says that "We provide speakers, presentations, and events so our members can gain necessary entrepreneurial skills while networking, building startups, and having fun. We encourage students from all disciplines and backgrounds to participate."

Western Michigan University also added Starting Gate, a business accelerator, to its repertoire in the summer of 2013. The extracurricular 100-day program provides workshops, speakers, and resources for participants to help bring their business ideas to fruition. Many of these students also participate in the annual PITCH Competition that is hosted by the Haworth College of Business. As the name suggests, students compete for funding through 3-minute pitches for their business ideas. This competition is one of the most popular entrepreneurial-based extracurricular activities that is offered by the university.

Faculty Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The projects and attitudes regarding Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the different colleges in the University reflect mutual goals. However, although the Haworth College of Business and the Parkview Campus of Engineering are only separated by 5 miles, there is very little information being shared regarding the direction of I&E within their respective colleges. The primary reason preventing this communication is taking place on the student level. Business students with ideas confer with other business students while Engineers tend to work with other engineers.

In terms 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. The Endowed Chairs for Innovation, Dr. Steven Butt (Chair of Department), Dr. Tycho Fredericks, Dr. Bob White, and Dr. Azim Houshyar, have a series of classes called Entrepreneur Engineering (I, II, and III) where their students come up with an innovative solution to a pain point in the form of a product, and learn how to model or produce a working prototype of it using the various labs on Parkview's Campus. 

Entrepreneurship seems to go hand in hand with the Haworth College of Business where they have a great group of mentors and professors that help their students grow and become more mindful of entrepreneurship in their school. The push for Entrepreneurship has come from the Dean of the college, Kay Palan. She has put a team together, along with the head of the Management department, creating the Endowed Chairs for Entrepreneurship which consist of Dr. Robert Landeros and his team of entrepreneurs in residence (John Mueller, Barcley Johnson, and Laurel Ofstein) who all come from a background of impressive entrepreneurship experience. 

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 has a unique advantage within the category of University-Industry Collaboration. The Engineering Campus located off of Parkview Avenue exists within a newly staffed Business Technology and Research Park. A full list of companies can be found here (http://wmich.edu/btr/companies), but the 42 companies taking residence here all give unique perspectives or job opportunities to WMU Students. Additionally, from competing in the "Chainless Competition" to re-designing residence halls to accommodate more residents, the engineering college is filled with senior design projects of each and every engineering discipline. The projects highlight companies located both in and out of the Business Technology and Research Park which have included Stryker, Hayworth, Parker Hannifin, Eaton Corp, Fabri-Kal, Denso and many more. There are two semesters worth of work that concludes with the company sponsors and the Kalamazoo Community attending the day long presentation of projects. Each group has a 30 minute window to present their project along with a written report due to the college and sponsor company. The most recent class of graduates contributed 152 projects and presentations to the university and surrounding industries. 

Regional and Local Economic Development Dfforts

The WMU chapter of the Institute of Industrial Engineers student organization is currently a Gold Member of IIE and last year hosted the entire great lakes region to a conference highlighting the need for innovation featuring keynote speakers from a variety of entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial backgrounds. The student group is composed of mostly industrial engineers but they are able to show the region what kind of innovation ways that are taking place at Western Michigan University in the paper competition, where some of the projects from the Entrepreneur engineering courses have been submitted. 

Starting Gate is the host of the PITCH competition but also holds semester long competitive entry programs where student groups get an opportunity to develop their startup venture alongside professional advice and access. new project started by the "B-School" to help with startups to present students with the resources to help build and grow their small startups. This is starting gate's third year of activity but they already have a diverse group of students ranging from incoming freshman expanding on a project they had in high school to MBA students trying to potentially start a career. 

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Christopher Woodward