Entrepreneur Center Looks to Tap Local Business Creativity
Published Nov 17, 2009
The corporations of the future are the one-person operations of today, and nowhere is that better illustrated than at the Francis Marion University Center for Entrepreneurship.
The center, which opened in January 2009, has long been a dream of business leaders and officials of the 4,000-student university in Florence. It already is making a difference in keeping innovative companies in the area, and its three-part mission of outreach, applied research and promotion of entrepreneurial ventures by FMU students and community members will broaden its impact even more, says Susan Peters, director.
“Entrepreneurship education is in all the majors at FMU, but we’re going out to teach classes to elementary and secondary students, as well as start some adult continuing education so that we have a ‘cradle to grave’ approach to entrepreneurship,” Peters says. “We want to make sure everybody knows what it is to be an entrepreneur, and how to take an idea and continue to make it grow.”
Francis Marion’s academic programs include a college of liberal arts and schools of education and business. The business school offers seven different majors - accounting, economics, finance, general business, management, management information systems and marketing.
The center’s other major focus will be on infant companies – putting together business plans, securing financing, finding office space and all the other nuts-and-bolts activities an entrepreneur will need to learn in a hurry.
Once those fledgling enterprises are operational, the goal is to tie them to much larger concerns.
“We want to work with economic development people so that when they bring in a large manufacturer that needs a machine shop, we’ve got someone who has that business already up and running,” Peters says. “We want to provide the workers for these large employers that will be coming in and to create those niche, support companies.”
Go to www.fmarion.edu/academics/centerforentrepreneurship for more on the center.
Story by Joe Morris
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