For the next Oprah Winfrey or Bill Gates living in the Bowling Green vicinity, the University is planning a new entrepreneurship center to help people develop budding business ventures.

The center, which has existed on paper for two years, is being funded with money from the Dallas-Hamilton award of $3 million that the University received last year, according to Nancy Merritt, dean of the College of Business and Administration. Funds from the award are also being used to reward a new professor each year with an endowed professorship. The first award was given to Professor Gene Poor this year.

Poor, who has started six local businesses since he began teaching at the University in 1972, is a professor of visual communication technology as well as business. He has won numerous awards from the University, including the 2004 Master Teacher Award.

Poor said he was blessed to receive the award, and he foresees a very successful future for the entrepreneur center.

“It’s going to give Bowling Green a lot of visibility in terms of working with aspiring entrepreneurs that aren’t necessarily involved on campus,” Poor said.

Students are also looking forward to the center’s benefits.

Although she will not be enrolled on campus next year, senior Erica Walsh said the center will still be helpful to new graduates and community members as they strive to put together workable business plans.

Walsh, whose minor is entrepreneurship, has unsuccessfully tried to start three businesses with her classmates. A center that will provide guidance to student entrepreneurs could help students get their businesses off the ground, Walsh said.

Nic Parrish, a University alumnus, agreed.

“I believe the entrepreneurship center will greatly improve the real-world applications of entrepreneurial learning for students,” he said.

According to Merritt, the center will eventually be housed somewhere on or close to campus, although she does not know where or when this will happen. The center will probably be housed in an already-existing building she said.

She added that a national search for the director of the entrepreneurship center is currently underway.

“The center director is going to start building the programming for the business and entrepreneurial community,” Merritt said.

Lecture series, workshops and training will be among the programs planned for the entrepreneurship center.

The center will be a place where students and community members can meet, providing students with internship opportunities, Merritt said.

So far, without a set location or director on campus, the center has begun a few projects.

For the past two years the center has facilitated the Bob and Karen Sebo Lecture Series, and WBGU is currently working with the center to create a national PBS series on American entrepreneurs.

The television series, titled “Entrepreneurial Spirit: A National Treasure,” will have 13 episodes featuring different American entrepreneurs. The University will be allowed to keep all the film from the project, including unused video recordings.

Merritt said this leftover film will be an invaluable teaching tool for the University’s entrepreneurship program.

“We are going to take these entrepreneurs and interview them longer than you would see them on TV, so that we can have some clips that students see later in our programs,” Merritt said. “What you might see on television is just going to be a small portion of what we have actually learned from these entrepreneurs.”

The entrepreneurship minor program has been available since fall 2003, when it enrolled 15 students. Today, over 100 students are minors in the program.

While most students in the entrepreneurship program are enrolled in the College of Business, the minor has attracted students from several other colleges on campus, a graph of the program’s enrollment statistics shows.

Bowling Green has taken a unique approach to their entrepreneur program, according to Poor.

“They use professors from all over campus,” he said. “There’s someone from the theater department who teaches, someone from technology. It is going to be an interdisciplinary program, so they are really opening up the gates to any faculty member with an entrepreneurial bent to their background.”

Student Aislynn Valentine, senior, said the minor is not only for students who want to start businesses.

“Entrepreneurship is not all about starting your own business,” Valentine said. “Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking.”

Merritt echoed this view.

“Entrepreneurship isn’t just about small businesses,” she said. “It’s about – taking a great deal of risk and facing potential growth with new and different ways of doing things.”