Kent State College of Business Administration Students Receive Venture Fund Grants for Businesses

KENT, Ohio - April 21, 2015 - PRLog -- Four College of Business Administration undergraduate entrepreneurship students received money from the Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation (CEBI)’s Student Venture Fund.

The Student Venture Fund was established to help support student initiated businesses. There are two types of grants available to students: the Venture Assessment Grant and the Venture Growth Grant.

The Venture Assessment Grant is geared toward students with a proposed business that sells a unique product or service with a clear market need. The grant helps to establish the feasibility of the business in order to gauge whether or not to invest and commit resources to launch the venture.

The Venture Growth Grant is for entrepreneurship students that have completed a business plan concluding that their proposed business is viable. The Venture Growth Grant pushes the student to finalize their business and pitch to attract investors to launch the business.

Oleg Lougheed, junior Russian translation major with a triple-minor in entrepreneurship, international business and marketing was awarded a $500 Venture Assessment Grant for the QuickSwitch Cover, a product that will allow individuals to efficiently switch between different computer keyboard character layouts within seconds.

Three students were awarded Venture Growth Grants.

Jake Wolfe, senior entrepreneurship major with a minor in marketing was awarded $3,000 for WolfeCon Cushioning Solutions. WolfeCon, which began in Wolfe’s dorm room, is dedicated to providing youth baseball and softball players the highest quality headgear to reduce impact of head collisions. Tests have shown that ToughSkull, the headgear, reduces the severity of impact by 33 percent.

Brian Bowles, senior entrepreneurship student who serves as a CEBI Student Startup Mentor, was awarded $3,000 for Blackwolf Tactical. Blackwolf Tactical is developing a police training system called the Darkhorse Training Platform, which combines experience based training with a large volume of data in a cost effective and collaborative platform that makes training accessible to all police officers.

Gavin Ursich, senior entrepreneurship major, was awarded $1,000 for Level Devil, a technology to prevent rollover accidents in commercial and non-commercial vehicles.

College of Business Administration students may apply for the Student Venture Fund twice a year, in the fall and spring. Students who apply are selected to pitch to the fund committee comprised of CEBI members.

For more information on CEBI, visit http://business.kent.edu/centers/cebi.

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Kent State University’s College of Business Administration is one of only 180 colleges or schools of business worldwide to achieve dual accreditation in both business and accounting from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International, the global accrediting body providing specialized accreditation at the bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral levels. The College of Business Administration is home to 4,502 students; the second largest college of business in Ohio. The college boasts a satellite office at Kent State University’s Career Services Center dedicated to business students, and operates the Global Management Center, the Center for Information Systems and the Center for Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation all propelling scholarly research, establishing innovative industry partnerships and providing outreach to Northeast Ohio and beyond.