Jack H. Brown College’s Inland Empire Center For Entrepreneurship — San Bernardino County’s Partner For Economic Growth

San Bernardino, Ca. — At the recent San Bernardino Regional Business Summit and State of the County address, Robert Lovingood, chairman of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, noted that the county is experiencing growth across a number of economic indicators, including job creation. More than 3,000 new employers added to the region’s economy in the past year.

Mike Stull knows something about job creation. As the director of the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship in the Jack H. Brown College of Business and Public Administration at Cal State San Bernardino, Stull’s initiatives have supported the efforts of more than 70,000 aspiring entrepreneurs, small business owners, and students over the past 20 years.

Using seminars, training workshops, coaching, business plan development, mentoring, and the college’s new incubator program, Stull’s team of experienced educators and business owners guide and help launch the next generation of entrepreneurs.

“Entrepreneurs are the ones that have vision, the ideas, the passion, energy and innovation to remake our economy, creating new jobs, and products and services that didn’t exist before,” said Stull, who is a professor of entrepreneurship. “Here in the center, we have the ecosystem to support and encourage their growth and help them move successfully out into the community.”

As acknowledgment of IECE’s work, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the premier accrediting body for business schools, ranked CSUSB’s program as a top 35 global program for fostering entrepreneurship and innovation.

According to Stull, everyone should have an entrepreneurial mindset. “Whether you ever start a business or not, employers are looking for people who ‘think like an owner’ and are willing and capable of adding value to the organization,” he said.

Data from CSUSB’s Office of Institutional Research indicates that more than 70 percent of Cal State San Bernardino’s students stay in the Inland Empire after graduation.

“These are our future community and business leaders,” said Stull. “Our job is to prepare them to be successful in a dynamic and changing economy.

“We have great educational institutions in the Inland Empire, and our educational attainment is getting better every year. We have good raw material, in terms of human capital, and we have excellent support from our government entities,” Stull said. “We need to keep building that because those assets make it easier for entrepreneurs to focus on what they do best.”

To learn more about the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship, contact Stacey Allis, assistant director, at (909) 537-3217 or stacey.allis@csusb.edu.

About Cal State San Bernardino

California State University, San Bernardino is a preeminent center of intellectual and cultural activity in Inland Southern California. Opened in 1965 and set at the foothills of the beautiful San Bernardino Mountains, the university serves more than 20,000 students each year and graduates about 4,000 students annually. The university offers more than 70 traditional baccalaureate and master’s degree programs, education credential and certificate programs, and a doctorate program in educational leadership.