PSU's Richard and Maurine Neuberger Center, the new home of the CE office.
The Portland State University (PSU) Center for Entrepreneurship (CE) has a new and strategic location on campus – selected and designed with collaboration in mind. The Richard & Maurine Neuhberger Center on SW 4th avenue is ‘home’ – and also a hub for all students across PSU’s campus to collaborate and innovate.
In fact, since its inception in 2012, the CE has intentionally been housed outside of any particular school within Portland State. This allows collaboration with all students, and majors across campus, no matter what their discipline.
Every year, students come to the CE with an idea, and a desire to solve a problem. Sometimes they need encouragement to further explore their ideas. Sometimes they need guidance in taking the first steps. The CE staff rallies around students no matter what stage they’re in and provides resources and mentors to assist them. Multi-disciplinary teams are brought together – including students from a variety of majors such as health, business, marketing, design, and engineering. Each student brings their unique lens to the project, creating a robust and dynamic team of problem solvers.
Innovative students create sustainably-focused companies such as Nexgarden, founded by CE alumni Skyler Peason and Hugh Neri. Nexgarden builds and operates indoor farms for wholesale produce sale, which are designed to minimize OpEx of labor using automation for seeding, harvesting, etc.
The co-founders went through what every CE student does. An iterative process with many rounds of trial and error. Collaboration between team members further exhausts the rinse and repeat cycle as each opinion or idea needs to be vetted. This process is necessary for the best end product.
Educators and mentors at CE are also rewarded through their collaboration with students. In fact, student feedback is what drove the creation of The Cube. It's a student incubator program providing more opportunities for students to grow their new companies outside of Portland State after completing their prototype and initial target market selection.
Blake Turner from Turner Automative, Reed Le from Cleantech Challenge team Copiosus, and Abigail Van Gelder, Assistant Program Manager for the Center for Entrepreneurship.Beyond the teamwork at CE, students gain exposure to employer resource groups in several industries including sports, outdoor, software, and semiconductors, just to name a few. This expanded CE network continues to create opportunities for students to make connections and meet the people who will make a significant impact in their lives.
At the decade mark of CE, the process of collaboration is proven. CE leadership looks forward to more innovation in the coming years. More information can be found at pdx.edu/entrepreneurship/