Business school integrates community

The word “business” may evoke images of bustling brokers on Wall Street or Madoff’s Main Street massacre to some, but new developments at Rutgers Business School’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development aim to change the way the world looks at commerce.
CUEED, an organization that works to promote wealth in urban communities, received a $25,000 grant from PNC Bank in support of its Entrepreneurship Pioneers Initiative, which provides training for aspiring entrepreneurs on the Newark and New Brunswick campuses, and in the surrounding communities, said CUEED Fellow Jeffrey Robinson, an assistant professor of management and global business. 
The one-year program is in effect in seven counties and helps about 50 participants per term for two to three years after completion, said Associate Director of Communications and Marketing at the Rutgers Business School Daniel Stoll.
CUEED, founded in fall 2008, is the brainchild of Associate Professor of Business Strategy D.T. Ogilvie and Rutgers Business School-Newark Dean Michael Cooper, is the first center in the nation to combine venture capital and city resources with University research to improve an urban community, Stoll said. The organization is taking on the state’s biggest city, Newark, where the school opened the doors, to its new headquarters at the start of the semester.
“Newark has had a lot of challenges over the years,” Robinson said. “It’s great to actually be involved in the resurgence of [the city].”
CUEED is focusing on helping small and medium-sized minority-owned dining, entertainment and retail companies in Newark’s University Heights section, Stoll said.
“We want people to spend money here, put people in business here, create jobs here,” Ogilvie said. “Our model is to transfer business know-how to people trying to make their businesses succeed.”
In addition to the grant from PNC Bank, CUEED receives funding from not-for-profit sources and the government, Stoll said. 
New Jersey-based real estate executive Paul V. Profeta has partnered with the organization and contributed $1 million in order to establish the Profeta Urban Investment Foundation at the business school, a not-for-profit equity fund that supports CUEED, according to their Web site. The organization also receives funds from the North Jersey Partners of Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development Initiative through a grant provided by the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration.
CUEED has been expanding quickly, but the business school is working to create other opportunities for all students as well.
Business school administrators are working on creating a new concentration in entrepreneurship for its students, but the school will also offer two new courses in entrepreneurship, “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” and “Social Entrepreneurship,” to students from all disciplines during the spring semester, Robinson said.
The objective of the added courses is to extend opportunities to those who may have an interest in starting a company or helping an underprivileged community but are not necessarily committed to studying business itself, Robinson said.

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