Out with the old, in with the New!

We are vigorously working to update the Collegiate Entrepreneurship Organization website. This will bring a new template, new links, an updated list of scheduled events & the latest news. We will create a new logo. These changes will make our website look creative and add an edge while making it easy to access important information.

Great News!

I spoke with my professor about the SEC and he volunteered to send it on to the dean of COLFA to be distributed.  This will allow us to reach one of the largest student segments at UTSA as soon as it is approved by Dr. Leffel.

Survey!

We are currently finalizing a survey for the whole campus that will help assess our entrepreneurial population and needs.  Our only problem is that we can't mass email students, so, for now, we have to go each professor and student organization to recruit people to take our survey.  Dr. Leffel also suggested that we table with laptops and recruit students to participate.  We are also looking for incentives to offer for people to take the survey.  Hopefully we can build strong contacts with the individual colleges and have emails sent out through them.

Socially Responsible Ideas

As we begin to look at new ideas for the Center, we want to offer expertise in a range of fields. On a broad spectrum, this involves start ups that are either "For Profit" or "Non Profit". Their are many students on campus that have socially responsible ideas for businesses they may want to launch. The SEC development team feels like these ideas are at the center for what the SEC envisions. A socially responsible business can be any type of for profit or non profit business that's main objective is to provide solutions to problems currently being faced by society. Here's an example:

"The origin of Grameen Bank can be traced back to 1976 when Professor Muhammad Yunus, Head of the Rural Economics Program at the University of Chittagong, launched an action research project to examine the possibility of designing a credit delivery system to provide banking services targeted at the rural poor. The Grameen Bank Project (Grameen means "rural" or "village" in Bangla language) came into operation with the following objectives:

extend banking facilities to poor men and women;
eliminate the exploitation of the poor by money lenders;
create opportunities for self-employment for the vast multitude of unemployed people in rural Bangladesh;
bring the disadvantaged, mostly the women from the poorest households, within the fold of an organizational format which they can understand and manage by themselves; and
reverse the age-old vicious circle of "low income, low saving & low investment", into virtuous circle of "low income, injection of credit, investment, more income, more savings, more investment, more income".


The action research demonstrated its strength in Jobra (a village adjacent to Chittagong University) and some of the neighboring villages during 1976-1979. With the sponsorship of the central bank of the country and support of the nationalized commercial banks, the project was extended to Tangail district (a district north of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh) in 1979. With the success in Tangail, the project was extended to several other districts in the country. In October 1983, the Grameen Bank Project was transformed into an independent bank by government legislation. Today Grameen Bank is owned by the rural poor whom it serves. Borrowers of the Bank own 90% of its shares, while the remaining 10% is owned by the government." (September 23, 2010, http://www.grameen-info.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19&Itemid=114)

Brainstorming

We have finally discovered what we think is a great starting point! After a quick brainstorming session, we have decided to go to the people! What are students all over the university looking for? Who already owns a business and what can we do to help those who want to own a business? We are currently working on a survey for the students and staff of UTSA in order to find out what is missing and how we can help!

Allison