A team of University of Arkansas students who created a business plan for a more efficient manufacturing process of solar cells has won first place at the Licensing Executives Society Foundation Graduate Student Business Plan Competition. The competition was held in Boston, Mass., on May 18, in conjunction with the Licensing Executives Society USA and Canada and Licensing Executives Society International annual meeting. The Silicon Solar Solutions LLC team won a cash prize of $10,000 and in-kind prizes provided by donors valued at $40,000. [Read more…]

AgRobotics has named Charles V. Michell, Jr., its president and COO, the North Little Rock firm announced Tuesday. AgRobotics, founded in 2006, manufactures and distributes the world’s first on-the-go soil sample collection technology. “We are very pleased to have someone as experienced and capable as Charles Michell join our management team at AgRobotics during this time of great opportunity and explosive growth potential in automated soil sampling,” said Jeffrey Burton, interim CEO. [Read more…]

Teams from the University of Arkansas earned top honors in the third-annual Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup tri-state business plan competition held May 21. The Arkansas teams were awarded first and second place in the graduate division, and first place in the undergraduate division, which included cash that can be used as funds to start their businesses. Faculty advisers also received cash awards. Top honors in the Tri-State competition went to: [Read more…]

Global Moot Corp, tonight announced the Global Champion of its competition is BiologicsMD, a team from the University of Arkansas, developing a new prescription medicine for the treatment of osteoporosis. Biologics MD is developing OsteoFlorTM, a new prescription medicine for the treatment of osteoporosis, based on research developed at the University of Arkansas. OsteoFlorTM binds directly to the bone, nearly tripling new bone growth. Paul Mlakar, President of BiologicsMD said “It’s a great honor to have won this prestigious competition, and we look forward to following the path of other winners in launching our company.” [Read more…]

Global Moot Corp, tonight announced the Global Champion of its competition is BiologicsMD, a team from the University of Arkansas, developing a new prescription medicine for the treatment of osteoporosis. Biologics MD is developing OsteoFlorTM, a new prescription medicine for the treatment of osteoporosis, based on research developed at the University of Arkansas. OsteoFlorTM binds directly to the bone, nearly tripling new bone growth. Paul Mlakar, President of BiologicsMD said “It’s a great honor to have won this prestigious competition, and we look forward to following the path of other winners in launching our company.” In addition to announcing its Global Champion, the competition also announced it is changing its name to the “Venture Labs Investment Competition” and repositioning itself as “The Super Bowl of Investment Competition.” It will continue to use its former name, “Moot Corp,” as part of its tagline for the foreseeable future. [Read more…]

Any education is not complete without establishing a practical application in real-life situations for what that person learns. Our students can take classes in broad subjects like math, English, or science. But in order to grasp the importance of this information and these skills in their lives beyond school, students must have the chance to employ those skills in a real-world setting. Earlier this month, I joined more than 2,100 students from across Arkansas in Hot Springs to apply their abilities in career and technical readiness at the 2010 Arkansas SkillsUSA State Leadership Championship. They showcased the skills they had amassed in culinary arts, construction and emergency response, among many others. [Read more…]

Business professors nationwide and in Arkansas are reporting the growing trend. Carol Reeves, an associate professor of management at the University of Arkansas’ Walton College of Business, says entrepreneurship programs have been the fastest growing major at universities. This, as the national unemployment rate hovers at 10 percent, and investment banks and Wall Street firms aren’t hiring as many business school graduates as they once did. Reeves’ class has gone from just 2 students in 2000 to 30 this year. At Harding University at Searcy, enrollment in entrepreneurship classes have doubled in the last five years. Such programs teach students everything from how to write a business plan to management, accounting and marketing. [Read more…]

On Thursday, the graduate and undergraduate winners of the 2010 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition will be announced at the sixth annual Governor’s Cup awards dinner. The dinner, always a gala event, caps months of work by hundreds of entrepreneurial Oklahoma college students. The teams submitted their written business plans in early March. The plans were evaluated through an independent review process, and the competition was narrowed to 12 undergraduate division semifinalists and seven graduate division finalists. [Read more…]

A UALR team developing a business plan to market a method of determining acetaminophen toxicity will make its oral presentation for two awards in the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup business plan competition Thursday and Friday, April 8 and 9. [Read more…]

Arkansas Tech University students will compete against eleven other teams in the Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Competition on Thursday. During the competition the Arkansas Tech team, which includes Samuel Collier, Zachary Massey, James Roberson and Ryan Treadwell, will present their business plan for a fictitious company before a panel of judges. The company is entitled EM Innovation and is a phone applications company that would send out an alert in the event of severe weather. This marks the 10th year for the competition, and organizers say it is “designed to encourage students of Arkansas’s universities and colleges to act on their ideas and talents in order to produce tomorrow’s businesses.” [Read more…]