Graceland University SIFE

May 5, 2009, Entrepreneurial Roundtable 2009

This year the Entrepreneurial Roundtable was held on Graceland’s Lamoni campus April 9th ,and was a valuable event for both students and professionals. This year’s event, sponsored in part by the JS Kemper Foundation, was themed “Building Online Businesses.”

To start the morning off, we had Cliff Illig, Vice Chairman and co-founder of Cerner Corporation speak with us. This was followed by four breakout sessions including; Angel Investor 101- Don Salyards, Cash in on Ebay- Janelle Cross, Social Network Marketing- Doug Mitchell and Building Online Business Basics taught by our very own Graceland University SIFE team.

During this year’s Roundtable, the Lamoni Development Corporation (LDC) also announced the winner of their $10,000 Student Business Plan competition. Three students presented their ideas for a small business to be implemented in the Lamoni area. Kirk Tabor was the winner with a paintballing business by the name of “Tabortooth Paintball”.

David Edey of SiteSell summed up the day by speaking on the importance of putting your business online, and several great prizes were given out including four Site Build It! memberships donated by SiteSell and Graceland SIFE.

-Ashley Campbell

May 4, 2009, Wellness in Lamoni

Graceland University/Lamoni Wellness has come a long way this semester! This project started out as just an idea to improve the wellness facilities on campus and now is ready to happen.

The idea for this project came from complaints to the student Senate about the need for better wellness equipment as well as the need to have wellness classes offered to students. The solution to that problem was to set up packages for students to be able to attend classes at the Living Arts Studio in town. Part of the money collected from the packages will go to the Living Arts studio and the other part will go in a fund to help improve the current equipment on Graceland campus.

The team this semester has put in a lot of hard work meeting with many important people on campus as well as off campus to have the program implemented and we are there! Students can now sign up for next semester to attend classes at the Living Arts Studio in downtown Lamoni.

-Jennifer Abraham

May 4, 2009, Visual Design in SIFE

This semester has been a busy one for the visual design team. We have been videotaping, editing, interviewing, and collaborating with most of the other project groups in order to present the Graceland SIFE story. We finished up with the stress of regionals a while back, and now we are diving head first into the Nationals video. We are punching the clock at all hours of the day, and we are determined to have a top notch video for the presenters to practice with. Aside from the presentation, we are helping other project groups create poster, flyers, and all around media to help make their projects more successful. We have had a very successful year, and we hope to continue that success in the near future at Nationals.

-Tyler Jones

May 4, 2009, Ethics

This school year the Intellectual Property team changed their name to Ethics. As a team we saw the need for a broader range of change. Although remembering the importance of ethical use of intellectual property, the Ethics team has now collaborated with JA BizTown to teach fifth graders on ethical resume building and interviewing skills. We also paired with the Building Online Business team helping them develop a program that teaches people how to ethically build a website, using legal software. Ethics is also pairing with Financial Literacy, and is continuing to spread through out all of Graceland SIFE's projects.

Apr 15, 2009, Financial Literacy

This semester the Financial Literacy team has put most of its efforts into educating high school juniors and seniors about the stock market. Our team created a curriculum that has allowed for the general knowledge to be gained of capital markets, basics of investing, and why it is important to invest your money now, all through the help of the Goldman Sachs Capital Markets competition. They have taken this curriculum into a Central Decatur High School classroom three times, and will be conducting a stock market simulation to show what the students have learned applied to a real life game. The class sessions have consisted of interactive games, presentations of information and definitions, as well as learning and understanding of ethical practices. Not only has the team impacted 23 high school students, but they have impacted themselves through knowledge gained about the stock market.

The Financial Literacy team is also partnering with the Graceland CAP Center to organize Graceland’s Senior Week at the end of April. Senior Week, funded in part by a generous grant from AIG, is designed to help graduating seniors gain more knowledge about the real world prior to graduation. The team’s goals are to help seniors understand the costs of buying or leasing a car, renting an apartment or buying a house, and payments of student loans, as well as how to manage their credit wisely. There will be a mock interview day with professionals and a picnic at the end of the week to honor the seniors for all the hard work they have done throughout their undergraduate career.

We hope to empower our seniors and help them gain confidence so they can make successful personal and business decisions when they enter the real world after graduation.

-Loralyn Heath

Apr 15, 2009, GU SIFE Presentation and Reception

To raise funds for our SIFE team's continued success and efforts to change the world

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Apr 14, 2009, Yes! Lamoni

Graceland SIFE’s Yes! Lamoni Team has been created in reflection of the already existing effort of Yes! Lamoni, the Lamoni, buy local campaign. During the fall semester in 2008 one main accomplishment was the reusable, “Yes! Lamoni” Grocery bag drive. These bags were sold for only $1.00 and represented the action of looking to buy local first. Now the Yes! Lamoni team is working to increase the communication between the local businesses and services with the students who attend Graceland University. Just yesterday the budget for an on-campus business directory was given the ‘OK’ by the Graceland Marketing Department. Now the team will communicate the importance for local businesses to be involved with their Chamber of Commerce. We will use the opportunity for a business to be in a Graceland Business Directory and the opportunity for it to be online through the Graceland and GU SIFE Websites to better sell Lamoni’s Chamber of Commerce Memberships.

We now have established 3 main goals going forward.

1. To recruit 100% of Lamoni’s retail and restaurant business for the Chamber of Commerce.
2. To establish an online presence for 10 Lamoni merchants for the first time.
3. To provide the Graceland campus with its local business information online and tangibly.

Apr 14, 2009, Entrepreneurship

The Business Plan / Small Business Consulting Team has been encouraging entrepreneurship on campus the past two semesters. Last semester, we promoted the entrepreneurial spirit on campus by educating students who wanted to start their own business. The team hosted a business plan workshop for students on campus, and then sponsored a Graceland Student Business Plan Competition. We had 13 entries for the competition, and these were our winners:

1st Place (tie) - $100 – Nate Myer – eBay Lamoni

1st Place (tie) - $100 – Andy Lavender, Greg Kelly – Online Real Estate

2nd Place - $50 – Molly Cornelison – MC Photography

3rd Place - $25 – Reed Manuel – Venture Online

The Graceland Student Business Plan Competition gave us a great way to introduce the Lamoni Development Corporation (LDC) $10,000 Business Plan Competition to the students on campus. This exciting award is for a student that starts and operates a new business in Lamoni. Three student business ideas were selected as finalists for the LDC competition:

Kirk Tabor: TaborTooth Paintball

Andy Lavender and Greg Kelly: Lamoni Online Real Estate

Molly Corneilson: MC Photography

The winner of the competition will be announced on April 9th, 2009 at the 18th Annual Entrepreneurial Roundtable sponsored by Graceland SIFE, Graceland University Sandage Center for the Study of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship, and the J.S. Kemper Foundation. The LDC competition finalists will be presenting their business ideas to student attendees and hosting a Q & A session during a Roundtable session.

We appreciate Lamoni Development Corporation’s sponsorship of the $10,000 Business Plan Competition, and look forward to congratulating the winner at this year’s Entrepreneurial Roundtable. Hope to see you there!

- Collin Isham

Apr 6, 2009, Southwestern Community College

Building Online Businesses

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Apr 3, 2009, Graceland University Entrepreneurial Roundtable

Graceland University is Hosting the 18th Annual Entrepreneurial Roundtable on the Lamoni Campus on April 9th, 2009

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