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University Daily Kansan / Friday, January 31, 1992
KU center helps businesses offers training to students
By Janet Rorholm
Kansan staff writer
For entrepreneurs, inventors, businesses and business majors, the University of Kansas Small Business Development Center is a place to learn.
The center, 734 Vermont St., Suite 104, is an outreach program of the KU School of Business that provides free and confidential counseling, acts as a resource center for the business community and plays an educational role by conducting seminars in surrounding counties.
Mike O'Donnell, director of the center, said the center's mission was to build better Kansas businesses.
"We're in the business to duplicate what the private sector offers," O'Donnell said. "If we ever got to that stage, there would be no reason to be here."
The center is one of 10 in Kansas that are connected to a university or college.
O'Donnell said the centers allowed universities to contribute to the state.
"If you can help the businesses who are opening, having problems or keeping them from closing, the better off the state is going to be," he said.
A business wellness checkup program that began Jan. 2 is designed to assess the health and profitability of a business. The program was modeled after a similar program in Arizona, O'Donnell said.
“Times are tough for a lot of businesses,” O'Donnell said. “With this program, we work with existing businesses to give them independent feedback. If we see something that is a potential weakness, we point that out so that they can fix that. Instead of being reactive in this economy, we try to be proactive.”
O'Donnell said the five KU students who worked at the center specialized in various fields of business.
"I'm not going to pretend that I'm teaching them," O'Donnell said. "It works both ways. They learn, but they
also bring in a lot of skills which help our clients."
One part of the plan in which students play a big role is the secret shopper program. Students shop at local businesses to evaluate the service. The program allows businesses to get a customer's point of view, O'Donnell said.
He said the center was not utilized enough partly because it could not advertise by law.
The Lawrence Chamber of Commerce was interested in results of the program to evaluate how different ethnic groups were treated in the Lawrence community, he said.
Mike Higgins, Lawrence graduate student, said that he hoped to own a business and that the job at the center gave him experience he would need.
Because of that, many people are missing out on a very useful resource, he said.
KU students Mike Hinnins and Kim Knofloch work at the KU Small Business Development Center
Higgins, whose specialty is financial
statement analysis, said he saw a future for small businesses in the state as long as they know what customers want.
"There is always the opportunity for people to succeed or find a niche to exploit, even in poor economic times," he said.
Justin Krupp/KANSAN
Barbara Etzel, Lawrence graduate student, owns her own business and specializes in professional organization.
She said working at the center gave her the opportunity to help others, as well as get experience for her own business that she could not gain in classrooms.
"I wanted to get some small-business experience and learn the structure of a small business," Etzel said. "At KU there really aren't a lot of classes geared toward small business."
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