From gourmet corndogs to drones, the Stephenson Entrepreneurship Institute Fellows Program helps students’ entrepreneurial goals become a reality.
The program is open to both undergraduate and graduate students of all majors who have a new idea for a product, business or social entrepreneurship.
“In order to do those things, you really need three fields: you need someone who understands the money side of business, someone who understands the marketing and product development side of the business, and then you need the creative or technical side of the business,” said College of Business professor Franz Lohrke. “It’s a way of getting the critical, technical or creative expertise into the discussion as well as the marketing and the accounting and finance side of things.”
The program consists of three courses: one in the spring, an internship in the summer and another course in the fall.
Fellow and management senior Drew Broussard said he enjoyed the non-traditional class format.
“It’s put me in touch with some really good people, and we’ve taken lots of tours of LSU’s facilities, so we know what’s available to us,” Broussard said.
Broussard is currently planning a gourmet corndog business called Cajun Corndogs.
He has crafted a traditional, homemade corndog recipe and hopes to create more.
“We’re going to hopefully move into different styles, like breakfast sausage as the meat and pancake batter to do a breakfast dog type or using chicken or alligator sausage,” Broussard said.
One of the main benefits of this program is the networking opportunities, Broussard added.
“There are people that want to meet us because they know what program we’re in,” Broussard said. “It lends us a little bit of credibility that we might not have had if we were just doing this on our own.”
Fellow and general business senior and offensive lineman for LSU’s football team Jibrail Abdul-Aziz plans to launch his drone service-based company in the spring with the help of the program.
His plan for the company is to provide drone service to aid companies in land surveying and roof inspections.
“It’s safe, cost-efficient and way better than risking somebody’s life sending them up five stories, ten stories up or on a power line,” Abdul-Aziz said.
Students of all majors are encouraged to apply on the College of Business’ website.
“We have several business majors, but we really like when we get the mass communication, musicians, engineers and computer science majors because they have a different perspective on the world and different skill sets,” Lohrke said. “When you mix all of those students in a room, they really have an interesting conversation.”
