The Lavin Entrepreneurship Center is housed within the College of Business Administration at San Diego State University (SDSU) and offers a blend of university curriculum and experiential learning opportunities to students across the SDSU campus. The Center provides academic curriculum through both a major and minor in entrepreneurship and hands-on learning opportunities through various co-curricular programs. The Lavin Center is a resource for SDSU students that provides an entrepreneurial foundation and encourages innovation.
The mission of the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center is "to inspire entrepreneurship campus-wide and enable students to develop the entrepreneurial competencies necessary to compete in the global economy."
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History
San Diego State University management professor emeritus, Dr. Daryl Mitton, formed the University's original Entrepreneurial Management Center (EMC) in 1980. In 1986, the EMC received its first funding and the program has been dedicated to entrepreneurial research and development since.
In 2012, the Entrepreneurial Management Center was renamed to honor Dr. Leonard H. Lavin, founder of the Alberto-Culver company and a longtime supporter of the Center. Dr. Lavin has been actively involved with the Center as a guest lecturer and mentor since 2005.
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Entrepreneurship Curriculum
The SDSU College of Business Administration works closely with the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center to offer a curriculum designed to meet the needs of students with an interest in entrepreneurship. The blend of academic and experiential learning is geared to provide students with a theoretical foundation as well as build and reinforce lifelong skills necessary to succeed as an entrepreneur.
Undergraduate Program
The Undergraduate Entrepreneurship curriculum is designed so that students who wish to have deep immersion in entrepreneurship can do so through the specialization, while students - from both a business and non-business background - seeking some exposure to the entrepreneurial mindset can do so through the minor.
- Specialization in Entrepreneurship: The Specialization in Entrepreneurship is crafted specifically for Management majors in the College of Business Administration. This specialization complements the managing theories and strategies in the core classes with an innovational and an entrepreneurial mindset. In this specialization, students have the opportunity to explore the ins-and-outs of family business, franchising, international and social ventures, as well as creativity and innovation.
- Minor in Entrepreneurship: The Entrepreneurship Minor is open to all students enrolled at SDSU, regardless of academic major. Through the entrepreneurship minor, both business and non-business students have the opportunity to learn how to take an idea, evaluate it, and potentially turn it into a real business.
Graduate Program
The Lavin Entrepreneurship Center supports the SDSU graduate program in entrepreneurship and acts as a physical hub on campus as well as a virtual web community that allows entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers to partner with one another and provide resources for start-up companies.
The case study lead curriculum is taught in an environment where students work in teams. Students are encouraged to think strategically, learn how to assess ideas and solutions, build appropriate financial and business models, and develop the right management and marketing strategies. The faculty in the program are a blend of tenured professors and industry experienced lecturers to provide a balance of theory and application.
Lavin Entrepreneurship Center Programs
The Lavin Entrepreneurship Center offers a wide range of co-curricular programs for SDSU students. Some of the programs available through the Center include:
- Lavin Center Internship Program: The Lavin Center's internship program provides graduate students with the opportunity to engage with an organization in the community through both for-profit and non-profit internships. MBA and other graduate interns take part in the development of short and long-term strategy, competitive marketplace due diligence, and the research and final recommendations for action. Strategic projects range from operations, finance, and management to business development, research and marketing.
- The Lavin Entrepreneur Program: The Lavin Entrepreneur program recruits sophomore students, from all SDSU colleges, to participate in a two-year program that provides them with an experience designed to prepare them for an entrepreneurial career. The aim of the program is to teach participants how to identify and evaluate new business opportunities, understand the roles and responsibilities of an entrepreneur, and how to marshal and deploy resources in order to launch and build new ventures.
- Entrepreneur Day: The Lavin Center hosts Entrepreneur Day on the SDSU campus as a way to bring together alumni and student-run companies to celebrate a mutual passion for entrepreneurship. The event provides an outlet where students and alumni can present and showcase their business ideas. Thousands of students and community members attend the event. Alumni and student-founded companies promote their brand, sell their products, and energize customers with the spirit of entrepreneurship.
- Start-up @ State: Start-up @ State is a two part event that brings local start-ups to the SDSU campus and presents students with the opportunity to interact directly with company founders. Students ask questions and hear directly from founders. In addition to the speaker engagement, attendees are invited to the Parma Payne Goodall Alumni Center where they are exposed to a number of start-ups all looking to hire students.
- WebCompass Internship: The Lavin Center's WebCompass Internship is an undergraduate program that involves three colleges at SDSU. The semester-long internship involves teams consisting of students from business, graphic/web design, and computer science who work to complete a website-based project for San Diego non-profits. The goal is for students to learn to work cross functionally and build a brand for emerging companies using websites and social media.
- L. Robert Payne Lecture Series: The lecture series brings entrepreneurs to SDSU to speak to and interact with students, faculty, and invited business representatives from the regional entrepreneurial community. The series was established in 1996 following a gift from SDSU alumnus L. Robert Payne, a long-time supporter of the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center.
- SDGE Program: The Lavin Entrepreneurship Center partners with San Diego Gas & Electric to provide Strategic Growth Planning for Entrepreneurs Program. This is a 43-hour course-based program open to Diverse Business Enterprises (DBEs), which includes owners and senior managers of women-, minority-, and service disabled veteran-owned businesses in Southern California. The program is designed to attempt to assist DBEs with the development of strategic objectives to improve and grow their businesses.
- Entrepreneurship Conference: The primary focus of the California Entrepreneurship Conference's is to increase the interaction between university thought leaders and serve as a spring board for sharing entrepreneurial initiatives taking place on different campuses. Each session focuses on engaging interaction between conference participants.
Business Plan Competitions
The Lavin Entrepreneurship Center hosts and has students participate in select business plan competitions. Students have the ability to pitch their start-up ideas to business professionals, receive feedback, and have the opportunity to receive financial and in-kind awards. Current competitions the Lavin Center are involved with include:
- Lavin VentureStart Competition: The VentureStart Competition is held every semester and is designed to encourage students on the SDSU campus to act on their talent, ideas, and energy. Students submit a business model canvas based on their ideas and four to five teams are selected to compete in the competition and present their business plan to a panel of entrepreneur judges. This business model competition cultivates ideas around lean startup and business model development to reward SDSU students for innovative ideation.
- LeanModel(TM) Competition: The LeanModel(TM) Competition is designed to assist and reward student based start-ups from California and Baja California's top four year universities. Students move quickly to develop a prototype, test their product on consumers, and pitch their start-up to potential investors while competing for awards to invest in their business. This competition encourages students to learn about the marketplace and focus on what consumers need based on the feedback.
- Venture Capital Competition (VCIC): VCIC is a strategy competition for venture-minded and entrepreneurial MBA students who seek to learn about entrepreneurship from an investors prospective. Teams read business plans, meet CEOs, conduct an abbreviated due diligence and summarize all of their analysis in an investment strategy that they pitch to a panel of judges.
Library
In addition to the collections and holdings at the Malcolm A. Love Library, the primary academic library on the SDSU campus, the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center maintains the Lavin Entrepreneurship Business Library, an extensive entrepreneurship-related library with an indexed collection of over 700 business plans, a state-of-the-art boardroom and numerous affiliations with local and national entrepreneurial organizations.
- EMC Resource Library
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