Students, faculty, business leaders, and guests statewide will gather as exciting young entrepreneurs from Arizona's business schools compete for prizes in the Rodel Foundation Arizona Venture Competition and Social Entrepreneurship Competition, hosted by the Karl Eller Center, on Friday, March 22, at 1:30 p.m. in McClelland Hall.
The event builds on a new tradition of entrepreneurship education awareness and promotion established through the Arizona Venture Competition, inaugurated in March 2000 at the University of Arizona.
This first-of-its-kind event brings together this era's key economic philosophies -- all under the Rodel Foundation title for a day dedicated to celebrating innovation, growth, entrepreneurship awareness and promotion, and socially responsible business planning across Arizona.
A total of 14 teams (five undergraduate and nine graduate) will compete for top honors in six separate divisions: Best Business Plan, Graduate Division; Best Business Plan, Undergraduate Division; Best Socially Aware Plan, Graduate Division; Best Socially Aware Plan, Undergraduate Division; Ridgetop Award In Technology Transfer, Graduate Division; and, Ridgetop Award In Technology Transfer, Undergraduate Division.
Arizona State University and Thunderbird Graduate School will join UA students to face off for the best graduate business plan title. Plan ideas include a national restaurant chain, a high-end skin care facility, to web-based software for procurement professionals, a line of gourmet Italian sauces, and a doggie day-care center.
The event is co-sponsored by the Karl Eller Center and the Rodel Foundation.
It is the intent of Rodel to foster a new kind of consciousness within emerging young leaders. It is our hope that these leaders of the future will bring to bear the skills and acumen of the business world in combination with the passion and the commitment needed to transform social concerns. These young people will be the new leaders in community activism from the nonprofit board to the State Legislature.
The Karl Eller Center's award winning Berger Entrepreneurship Program continually sets the standard for other programs nationwide, remaining in the forefront of innovation. Its comprehensive, interdisciplinary curriculum provides a stand-alone major for undergraduate seniors, an area of concentration for masters in business administration, a certificate program for associates in technology transfer, students from technical-based colleges such as engineering, science, medicine, and agriculture, and a certificate program for associates in borderlands business development for students from Mexican-American and Native-American Studies.