The Center for Entrepreneurship in Liberal Education at Beloit (CELEB) serves Beloit College students in developing entrepreneurial ventures through a business incubator, digital media lab, art gallery, foundation office, and makerspace. It aims to empower students to achieve their goals through entrepreneurial skills like venturing, critical thinking, and effective action. Entrepreneurship is seen as a model for liberal arts education in promoting excellence and social contribution. The center hosts various programs, speakers, and opportunities to help students explore entrepreneurship in business and the arts.

1. An entrepreneurship center and
program composed of a business
incubator, a digital media lab with
a music recording and television
studio, an art gallery, a
foundation office, and a
makerspace, CELEB serves the
students of Beloit College in their
entrepreneurial ventures in both
business and the arts.
“We seek to enable and empower
students to gain fulfilling life,
marked by high achievement and
public contribution, through
imparting the skills of successful
venturing in all its forms.
“This mission is essential to a
liberal education that recognizes
that the liberation of students for
successful pursuit of wisely
chosen goals requires abilities of
effective action as well as critical
thought and mastery of
knowledge.
In commerce the commitment to
self-selected ends and the
creative marshalling of resources
is called entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship is a model and
a metaphor for the general aims
of the liberal arts, as they seek to
promote excellence in
achievement and social service.”
— Jerry Gustafson’63, Emeritus,
Professor of Economics 1967—2013,
Coleman Foundation Chair of
Entrepreneurship 1986—2012, Founder
& Director of CELEB 2004—2011
The Los Angeles Dodgers, the iconic Major League
Baseball franchise, will have Joe Davis’10 call 50
televised road games this season. Davis will tag-team
with Hall of Famer Vin Scully, who, in his 67th year in
broadcasting, is abbreviating his schedule. For Davis,
28, the contract is the fruition of a major goal, beyond
even his prior work for ESPN and Fox Sports.
At CELEB, Davis took his love of sports and media
and founded Big Game Videos, a student venture where
he produced recruiting tapes for high school athletes.
Davis also broadcast various Beloit College sporting
events, eventually leading to an internship as play-by-
play announcer for the Schaumberg Flyers, a
professional baseball club of which John Hughes of the
Coleman Foundation was an owner.
Davis recently returned to Beloit to participate in the
Spring Advising Practicum, a day devoted to student
advising and planning. Reacting to the presentation, first
-year Michael Boyland said, “It really hit home for me.
Hearing his story makes me realize the importance of
the things, like networking, that we practice all the time
at CELEB.”
Boyland was not alone. Davis displayed his
abundant talent as he locked in the audience of aspiring
media students in the Neese Theater during his 30
minute talk. Along with many anecdotes, including
taking voice lessons from Theater Professor Amy Sarno,
who coordinated the event, Davis laid out his
deceptively simple philosophy: Become an expert at
something, be nice to others, and build your network.
He also put goals in place early on—and on his
refrigerator. “I put my goals where I could see them all
the time; I wanted that reminder to never let up and work
hard every day at making progress,” he said.
His end game was ambitious: To have a spot in a
MLB broadcast booth before his 30th birthday. While
accomplished ahead of schedule, the path was not
obvious. He told the story beginning with a bungled
networking attempt with Cubs announcer, Len Kasper. A
letter lost in transit, miraculously found its way to Kasper
via a manager of a Taco Bell near Wrigley Field. He
became an important mentor and his recommendation
helped Davis bag his first post-grad position in 2010 as
the voice of the Montgomery Biscuits. That proved to be
his launch pad.
Then on a warm August night in 2013, Victor Mateo
pitched a no-hitter for the Biscuits. A dream come true
for any broadcaster, Davis made the most of the
opportunity. He sent his pitch-perfect performance
throughout his network and it landed in the hands of a
New York City-based agent, who now represents
Davis. That powerful relationship resulted in work with
ESPN (not enough room for that great story), and, as
they say, the rest is history.
Beloit ranked 41st on the list of Forbes Top 50 Most
Entrepreneurial Colleges. Using LinkedIn, each school’s
entrepreneurial ratio was scored by finding the number
of alumni who identified as founders or business
owners, divided by the total student population of the
school.
While success is not measured by magazine
mentions, this is an opportunity to highlight the fact that
the liberal arts are fertile grounds for inculcating
entrepreneurial thinking. Over the years, students and
alumni have proven that broad-based knowledge, self-
selected ends, and creative marshalling of resources
yield results and impact lives.
This speaks to the ethos of CELEB. Whether
founders of lifestyle businesses or huge companies, the
common thread is self-agency, confidence, and the
ability to learn what you need to know when you need to
know it. This is the power of the liberal arts. Since its
inception as an entrepreneurship center hundreds of
would be entrepreneurs have walked through our doors
and more still took trailblazer Jerry Gustafson’s
entrepreneurship classes even before he founded
CELEB.
The magazine also profiled Stewart Butterfield, the
founder and CEO of Slack, the knowledge management
software. Noted Butterfield, “...real added value comes
from people who can sell and humanize.” After all,
relating to others is key to business success. Butterfield
went on to credit his liberal arts education for everything
he learned about management. So, to the hackneyed
cliché, “What do you do with a philosophy major?” The
answer: start a prosperous company.
Top 50 Startup School
p.2
Center for Entrepreneurship in Liberal Education at Beloit
p.3
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2. Guest speakers made an impact in the 2015 –16 school year.
Visitors included DeVon L. Wilson’90 of the Real Sports Guys podcast,
serial entrepreneur and benefactor David Myers’49, eminent trumpet
player Tony Scodwell, Rashad Devoe of Men’s LaCrosse, Coleman
Fellow Rongal Nikora, Sustainability Coordinator Lindsay Chapman, Niko
Skievaski of Redox, a startup in the electronic health records space,
Spiritual Life Director Bill Conover, Parker Newman, Adam Newman, and
Jonathan Mandell of Tiz and participants in the startup boot camp
gener8tor, and Jaxon Klein’09, Cayetana Polanco’11, Delna Sepoy
Straus’09, and Tiago de Almeida of biometric startup Keyo.
As luck would have it, two of our guests share an interesting link:
both played surprise performances with Frank Sinatra. In 1950 David
Myers, who made his spending money playing piano during his time at
Beloit, was in London visiting his father. David and his brother were
invited to a party hosted by the Commander of the United States Third
Air Division in Britain. That night Frank Sinatra popped in and asked for a
piano player. Dave volunteered and the two played a few songs for the
party. Then, in the 1960’s Tony Scodwell played with Frank Sinatra, Jr.,
as a traveling member of his band. During one show in 1969 Ol’ Blue
Eyes, himself, and Nancy Sinatra were in the audience. Coaxed on stage
for a song, the father and son performed “All or Nothing at All”
accompanied by Scodwell and the band. A rare and remastered video of
the performance can be found on YouTube.
When Willow Macy’16, turned up in Introduction to
Entrepreneurship this fall, no one could have predicted how
fruitful her time at CELEB would be. Well into the semester,
after attending the Premier Night at gener8tor, a startup
accelerator, and getting signed up for CEO, a college
entrepreneurship conference, Macy asked us an exciting
question, “I’m getting a 3D printer; can we put it in CELEB?”
The answer was a resounding yes! She secured funding
and pulled together support from other students with
interdisciplinary interests and made it happen. Macy even
exercised her negotiation skills to get the most she could
within budget. She procured not only a top of the line 3D
printer with the largest print volume available, but also an
additional smaller desktop printer, a digitizer, and enough
PLA filament to last the school year.
In keeping with CELEB’s founding principles, namely to
have labs chock-full of technology for student use, CELEB is
proud to host this equipment. Design thinking and ideation have little point without the capability to rapid
prototype. It’s important to make things. A student organization to oversee the maintenance of the machines
is recruiting and training students who may want to use the equipment for projects of their own design.
Willow Macy’16 & Tom Porkka’16 hold the first 3D printed
model from MakerLab.
Willow Macy’16, Founder of
MakerLab, Co-founder of Brew
Swap, Intern at Classmunity, &
Awardee
Isaac Bamgbose’13 learned first-hand through CELEB the
value of space, mentors and programs designed to assist
entrepreneurs in jump-starting their ideas. Now, only three years
after graduating, he is putting that experience into practice in his
role managing the Hendricks Commercial Development’s design
and construction of Irontek, a combination co-working space,
business incubator, and startup accelerator. Located in the
massive Beloit Ironworks Campus, Irontek is part of a $38 million
renovation of the former Beloit Corp buildings, which also houses
a number of heady startups including Fat Wallet, now a division
of Ebates, and Comply365, a leading compliance software for
airline pilots.
Bamgbose and Irontek Community Manager, Erin Clausen
hosted students for a tour as a part of the college’s Advising Practicum, a full-day dedicated to
student development of academic priorities and plans for activities at Beloit and
beyond. Bamgbose said, “This will be a resource for students to get exposure to startup
companies, gain valuable work experience and have the chance to network.”
IronTek incubator hosts tour for curious students.
Macy Entrepreneur of the Year
Biology major Willow Macy’16
was awarded the 2015-16 John
E. Hughes Entrepreneur of the
Year Award. Named for the
Chairman Emeritus of the
Coleman Foundation, the award
goes to the student who best
contributes to the spirit of
entrepreneurship within
academe.
Last fall Macy attended the
Collegiate Entrepreneurs
Organization Conference (CEO).
Making great use of the
conference, she returned with
two internship offers, a student-
venture team, and a special
project proposal. Pursuing these
three projects simultaneously,
Macy accepted one of the
internships with a startup in the
fundraising management space
called Classmunity, took on a
student-venture with Co-founder
Tom Porkka called Brew Swap,
and pulled together resources
and student leaders for
MakerLab.
Macy’s up-bringing is deeply
entrenched in making. Her
parents are diplomats, so she
lived all over the world, spent
time on an off-the-grid farm in
Central Wisconsin, attended a
hands-on-learning boarding
school, and designed her own
high school internship in South
Africa. When she came to Beloit,
she was already well versed in
blacksmithing, 3D printing,
robotics, and woodworking.
She believes that learning with
your hands, collaborating,
problem solving, and skill sharing
are essential in training young
people to be innovative and
entrepreneurial. This will serve
her well in her fall honors term
where she will use the
makerspace to develop
applications for teaching and
learning.
Myers’49 accompanies Frank Sinatra while
visiting London, July 4, 1950. Photo via
News Chronicle.
2 CELEB Summer 2016

3. Before the Self Employment in the Arts Conference (SEA) was
conceived, another endeavor connected the link between artists, self-
employment, and entrepreneurship education. This was the Coleman
Council on Entrepreneurial Awareness and Education (CEAE), whose
original members explored the possibilities for the emerging field. These
included Jerry Gustafson’63 of Beloit College, Gary Ernst of North Central
College, and Joe Roberts, then at Columbia College and now at Webster
University.
With entrepreneurship just beginning to show up in course listings,
directing artists to these classes was on no one’s agenda. However,
Gustafson argued that artists are close cousins of entrepreneurs. “Creating
something from nothing is de facto entrepreneurial; artists must promote
and market their work much as any business,” he wrote. Aspiring artists
needed to learn business acumen from working artists. A few workshops
and later a full blown conference emerged from these ideas.
Gustafson recalled one of the first guests of SEA, J.R. Sullivan’72, whose experience of theater as a
business was extensive. For 16 years SEA has presented similarly savvy visual artists, musicians,
dancers, filmmakers, and other self-employed working practitioners. SEA is now the most attended
conference by Beloit students.
This year SEA created the SEA Visionary Leader Award. Gustafson, who was among the first winners,
offered his gratitude in a letter to the conference coordinator Amy Rogers of North Central College. “It has
been an honor to be associated with this whole endeavor... I am truly honored by the recognition that
many others deserve more than I,” Gustafson wrote. Gustafson’s commitment to arts and
entrepreneurship is wide-reaching as evidenced by his cultivation of the Myers Institute for the Art of
Business and the Business of Art which houses Gallery ABBA, BATV, and Maple Studio on the first floor
of CELEB. This suite of learning labs was Gustafson’s brainchild and has connected into the conference
to provide an array of opportunities for generations of artists at Beloit.
Riley Pearson’17 and Will Marcus’16 teamed up with Rockford’s Barbara Olson Center of Hope last
summer to test a business idea that empowers adults with disabilities. The two students worked side by
side with the Center of Hope team to certify adults with disabilities in landscaping best practices. They
helped create marketing materials to communicate with customers. The green mowing business proved
to have its unique challenges including difficulty with attention to detail and limited stamina of the
participants. Creating mowing teams and pairing teams with coaches helped, and the Mowing Power
teams began to find their stride. While the scope of summer 2015 was focused on testing the idea, this
summer promises to offer socially conscious citizens and businesses a great way to care for their lawns
and their community.
The Coleman Foundation, which supports both entrepreneurship education and programs
addressing developmental disabilities, brokered the relationship between Beloit College and the Center
of Hope.
Professor of Economics, Diep Phan, has been appointed the Coleman Foundation Chair in
Entrepreneurship. The chair, which was the first in the country to be established at an exclusively
undergraduate liberal arts institution, also includes leadership of the Coleman Fellows Program. Coleman
Fellows are professors from across the gamut of disciplines such as political science, health and society,
chemistry, physics, art, and anthropology, who establish entrepreneurship principles as guiding features
in their permanent course offerings. Phan, a Ph.D. in Economics, brings a unique perspective to the chair.
Raised in Vietnam under communism, her father and brother became entrepreneurs against all odds.
Phan looks forward to translating economic theory into the actionable world of entrepreneurship. “I have
always been fascinated at the creation, growing, and running of a business. I welcome the opportunity to
apply my economics background to that issue,” she said.
The new Coleman Chair has three foci as she begins. The first is a survey of faculty, staff, and
students to determine the scale of entrepreneurial activity present in the college. The second is to develop
a creativity and design thinking competition. The third project is to encourage students in the investigation
of international entrepreneurship. CELEB welcomes Phan; we have already begun working together on
the future of the Coleman Fellows.
Former Chair Warren Palmer now turns his full attention to the Upton Forum. He chaired his second
forum in 2015-16 with the theme Entrepreneurship in the Chinese Economy. Yasheng Huang,
International Program Professor in Chinese Economy & Business and Professor of Global Economics and
Management at MIT Sloan School of Management, joined as the Upton Scholar, along with other
international panelists including alumni Deming (Eddie) Tang’84. As evinced by the Upton Forum, Palmer
remains a committed ally of the Coleman Fellows and promoter of entrepreneurship on campus.
Rob Robinson’18, Eriq Johnson’19, Darryl
Smith’17, Jaren Holden’19, and Jesse
Wiles’19 pose at SEA.
Students Devour
Conference Opportunities
In addition to CELEB’s annual
conferences, Self Employment in
the Arts (SEA) & Collegiate
Entrepreneurs Organization
(CEO), students led trips of their
own choosing to Harvard
University, Portland, and Silicon
Valley, as well as carried on work
from last year’s conference take-
aways.
Tom Porkka’16, University
Innovation Fellow for CELEB,
joined UIF students from across
the country at the annual Silicon
Valley Meetup sponsored by
VentureWell, a project of the
Lemelson Foundation. He toured
Google and attended workshops
at Stanford University.
Willow Macy’16 and Program
Coordinator Meghan Trimm
attended the VentureWell Open
Conference in Portland, OR to
explore the topic of maker
spaces and entrepreneurship in
higher education.
Duncan McFadden’18 and
Porkka’16 organized a group of
10 students with ECON Club who
attended the first ever Illuminate
Conference at Harvard.
Last year Mellody Strahan got
the spark when she organized a
trip for herself and three other
students to Chicago’s Lake FX
Summit. Since then she
submitted a paper which was
accepted at the First Annual
ACM Student Film Conference at
Lawrence University. She also
organized the first ever CSTUFF
(CELEB Student Film Festival),
and she continues to explore
filmmaking through the emerging
virtual reality space.
Finally, CELEB brought
record attendance to SEA with 38
students. 6 attended CEO. On
the way to CEO Kansas City,
Beloiters joined UW Milwaukee
and UW Whitewater students,
exploring case studies and
exercises on a sponsored bus
known as the Mobile Innovation
Station.
Summer 2016 CELEB 3
Jerry Gustafson’63, Professor
Emeritus & Founder of CELEB

4. From the
Director
“He’s considering a school with more of a
business focus,” a mother, herself an admirer
of Beloit, recently wrote about a son that
needed some further convincing. A derivative
of the perennial cliché about what can one do
with a liberal arts degree, the parent was
looking for ammunition to persuade him. Well,
good news: there are plenty of considerations
in support of her cause.
The liberal arts are a powerful ally in the
business world. I can personally attest. After
graduating from Beloit, I spent my career as an
entrepreneur and business person in the beer
industry where I encountered a wide-range of
issues. While these had business implications,
most would never be taught in business
courses. Imagine having a series of
conversations spanning from quality assurance
issues with a lab tech, to government affairs
matters with a lobbyist, to aesthetic
considerations with a graphic designer. No
doubt each of these topics require someone
with deep content knowledge (much of which
was most likely acquired after leaving college),
but my role was to ask good questions,
determine what was important, and tease out
nuances. Picking up the mechanics of business
is relatively easy. The challenge comes with
the judgment it takes to apply those skills to
great effect. A liberal arts background helps
develop that aptitude.
The Harvard Business Review agrees. In a
recent article, “Digital Companies Need More
Liberal Arts Majors,” the influential
management magazine argued that possessing
the capacity for creativity and empathy is
essential. And the corollaries of having vision
and listening skills are key to navigating the
world going forward. Whether facing coding in
the latest language or analyzing big data, these
bedrock abilities will inform whatever the skill
du jour may be.
Be it business, journalism, engineering or
other major fields of concentration that the
liberal arts don’t offer per se, the underlying
skills - of computing, cyphering, persuasive
writing, effective speaking, and careful
reading - endure as the central activities and
the skills needed for success. These
fundamentals position students to take on
new, unrelated challenges. By combining
these skills with curiosity, perseverance,
resourcefulness, and the ability to draw
conclusions, students will possess durable
skills and be prepared to thrive in the blinding
velocity of change that marks the modern
world.
We hope we’ll see him in the fall.
4 CELEB Summer 2016
*The Coleman Fellows are a national organization that builds support for entrepreneurship education, advances the focus on self-
employment and for-profit business creation, and cultivates cohorts of entrepreneurship educators across disciplines who
permanently incorporate entrepreneurship into their classes.
Special Thanks: Coleman Foundation David’49 & Anne Myers VirginiaWebster
Ginny & Allan George’82 John E. Hughes David Hendricks’64
Brian Morello, Director
ext. 1101, morellob@beloit.edu
Meghan Trimm, Program Coordinator
ext. 1100, trimm@beloit.edu
Maple Tree Studio
Ian Nie, Director
ext. 1104
Beloit Access TV
Keith Urban, Producer
ext. 1116
Gallery ABBA—Myers Institute
ext. 1115
WISE Foundation
Coleman New Venture Lab
ext. 1100
Jerry Gustafson, Founder
gustafj@beloit.edu
2016-17 Coleman Fellows*
Diep Phan, Coleman Foundation Chair of
Entrepreneurship, Economics
Warren Palmer, Past Coleman Chair, Neese
Chair
Chris Fink, English
Dan Bartlett, Anthropology
George Lisensky, Chemistry
George Williams, Art
Gina T'ai, Dance
Ian Nie, Music
Laura Grube’08, Economics
Paul Stanley, Physics
Rachel Ellet, Political Science
Ron Nikora, Health & Society
Tes Slominski, Music
Theodore Gries, Chemistry
Scott Espeseth, Art
@BCCELEB
Beloit College CELEBCELEB: The Center for Entrepreneurship in Liberal Education at Beloit
437 E. Grand Avenue
Beloit, WI 53511
608-361-6611
www.beloit.edu/celeb
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BELOIT COLLEGE
700 COLLEGE ST BOX216
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