The Facts:The University has several programs to assist students in progressing their entrepreneurial ideas, including the Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program.

Our Opinion:Students must fulfill the call for innovation and think outside the box as Italo Leiva has; it’s part of students’ calling.Entrepreneurship is the backbone of American society.It carries a big calling, but it’s the necessary one. Time and again, history has shown the importance of innovators and proved their importance to the country. At the outset of industrialization, Ford, Firestone and Edison changed the way we moved and worked; the computer revolution brought the world Joy, Gates and Jobs, showing the possibilities of the computer.But it’s more than the big names who changed the world. The small businessmen and women — the innovators — make a huge difference in our society.It may seem trite or trivial, but the call for fresh, creative thinking has never been greater.The stories of students like Italo Leiva, a junior in psychology who developed a new guitar learning process using colored strings, are essential to the University and help propel the value of its degrees. Faculty recognition and facilities are always a plus, but those don’t win over the public; ideas do.From business to engineering, the University has great initiatives for innovative students and has developed classes and other resources to help students become contributors to their communities. The Entrepreneurship Initiative and the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program are just two of the many opportunities students have to do something “real” while they attend classes. They should take note of those opportunities and use them as tools to advance their own creativity; the possibilities are literally endless.N.C. State is a huge community with a broad range of interests and achievements on its campuses and in the annals of its history. Alumni, both recent and from long ago, are leading the way in many Fortune 500 companies and industry as a whole.Students’ duty — and, thus, their privilege — is to continue that legacy and leave a gift of invention for students for years to come.Not all the inventions will be big, but it’s the small stuff that often makes the difference. NCSU is a place of innovation — and of innovators. All students have that calling and must make it a goal to become creators, especially when the economy — and the job market — is at its worst.