Attention Entrepreneurs! Baylor Community Entrepreneurship Program offers Eight Sessions of Business Fundamentals for $40
By Shaun Limbers
Baylor University, nestled on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco, is a private Christian university and a nationally ranked research institution. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas, Baylor is the oldest continually operating university in Texas, and in fact, is older than the State of Texas itself. In 1977, Baylor became one of the first universities in the nation to create a Center for Entrepreneurship. Within the highly ranked Hankamer School of Business, the Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship & Free Enterprise (the “Baugh Center”) is the focal point for entrepreneurial development at Baylor. At its core, the purpose of the Baugh Center is to develop entrepreneurs outside the walls of the Baylor classroom and help catalyze and grow business ventures.
Baylor’s mission is to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community. Since its founding over 174 years ago, Baylor has continually maintained a tradition of extending its mission outside the halls of academia into the local community. As an active participant in the Waco small business community, Baylor and the Baugh Center observed a need for business and entrepreneurship training, particularly among small businesses that exhibit potential but that may lack fundamental business knowledge to achieve that potential.
The Baylor Community Entrepreneurship Program (the “Baylor C.E.P.”) is a faith-based community business and entrepreneurship training program created for small businesses, hosted by local churches or community centers, and facilitated by local successful entrepreneurs and executives. Each Baylor C.E.P. course is comprised of a total of 8 sessions held weekly at local community churches or community centers, with each session running for 2 hours. The Baugh Center provides the Baylor C.E.P. with best-in-class business and entrepreneurship content developed by some of the brightest minds in business. Unique to the Baylor C.E.P., best-in-class business and entrepreneurship content is delivered in an environment that is openly faith-based, welcoming small business participants from all faith backgrounds to learn in a caring, faith-based environment, with an emphasis placed on business excellence achieved through ethical business morals and execution. While core program content makes the Baylor C.E.P. unique, so too does its format insomuch as it relies less on traditional classroom lecturing and instead focuses on business fundamentals delivered through engaging core content provided in conjunction with interactive classroom exercises, peer problem solving discussions, real world case studies with facilitator explanations, and Baylor student collaborations – all facilitated by successful entrepreneurs and executives. This unique format is designed to achieve maximum impact, particularly with small businesses who thrive in this type of learning environment.
In addition to core business fundamentals and training, the Baylor C.E.P. is also designed to architect a network of additional business and entrepreneurship resources available to small business participants. This network of additional business and entrepreneurship resources include, among other items, QuickBooks accounting training and access provided in partnership with Intuit (a $1,000 value), opportunities to be matched with mentors and business leaders in the community, funding and loan assistance for small businesses, as well as networking opportunities.
Two Baylor C.E.P. courses were successfully conducted in Spring 2019 with large community churches based in Waco. A Baylor C.E.P. course will be offered at Highland Baptist Church in Waco beginning on September 23, 2019 and will be comprised of 8 sessions, with each session held on Monday nights from 7:00pm to 9:00pm at the Highland Baptist Church campus. While the Baylor C.E.P. provides thousands of dollars in value to small business participants, the cost is only $40.
The goal of the Baylor C.E.P. is to empower small business participants with the opportunity to achieve economic transformation, rooted in faith-based business and entrepreneurship. That economic transformation in turn provides small business participants with the opportunity to positively impact and transform the lives of their own families, friends, churches, and communities – representing a catalyst for the Waco community at large. For participants of the Baylor C.E.P., it’s an opportunity to empower themselves with business fundamentals and resources designed to help them achieve their goals. “Taking the CEP class was one of the best decisions I have made as a small business owner,” says Tonja Carpenter, owner and founder of a local small business specializing in caring for expecting and new mothers.
The next Baylor C.E.P. course will begin on September 23, 2019, and will be hosted by Highland Baptist Church. Enrollment is currently underway and is open to small business owners and their employees. Scholarships are available for those who are unable to meet the $40 enrollment fee. For more information and to enroll, please email [email protected] or send “TEXT” to Arnold Reyes at (214) 476-5456.
Shaun Limbers currently serves as Program Manager for the Baylor Community Entrepreneurship Program, having recently relocated to Waco with his wife and children from Scottsdale, Arizona. Shaun’s career has spanned numerous facets of private venture finance and investment, with an emphasis in private equity. Shaun can be reached at [email protected].
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