Entrepreneur Launch Pad

The Entrepreneur Launch Pad (ELP), located on the third floor of the Learning Commons, fosters a climate of entrepreneurship that helps students across all academic disciplines to explore commercial opportunities based on their innovative business ideas. Supportive of students whose goal is to launch their own business enterprises, the program pairs practical, down-to-earth experiences with a broad academic and theoretical background—plus a firm grounding in values of ethical leadership, integrity, and accountability, at which Marywood has long excelled. The ELP concept was the brainchild of Dr. Art Comstock and Dr. Christopher Speicher. "Starting a business isn’t discipline specific," said Dr. Speicher. "This is about passion; it’s about channeling that passion into specific training on how to start a business. We can provide the right tools and help students with that.”

Dr. Speicher, who teaches an entrepreneurship class, says the ELP involves an “extremely hands-on” approach to making students who want to start their own businesses a success. “Our tagline is ‘Entrepreneurs Helping Each Other.’ The idea is to have an exchange of services. Our students will be looking to experienced entrepreneurs for assistance and guidance. In exchange, the students will be providing services to the entrepreneurs through internships, volunteerism, employment, and other factors. When you open up a text book, they all say the same thing. We all teach the same thing in the classroom about how to start a business, but until you take the students and inspire them to actually do it— that’s when you get to that next level. That’s when it makes sense.”