Discussion: View Thread

Hi - I'm working on expanding our entrepreneurship offerings on our campus, but am running into a few hurdles. Do you have student-run companies that are not owned by students and get passed on to the next generation of student entrepreneurs? Our problem is that the university will not recognize them as a student club because they hire students. The university also does not want to allow the group to incorporate with the university as the registered agent. This puts the group into a nebulous zone of not having a foundation to share year after year as new students take over the entity. BTW- the students sell goat cheese - university mascot is a goat. They ship around the US and it very good cheese should you need any up an upcoming spring celebration :-). Gompei's Goat Cheese

We don't currently have any student teams that own their companies and want to sell on campus, but if you do have a model for that I'd love to hear about it. 

Also, do you have a student run investment club and how is that handled? The students want to get set up with a trading platform (legitimate, well-established entity) but again a SSN or company EIN is needed to set up the account. How does your investment clubs handle this?

 
WPI is a STEM-driven school and so these types of student run organizations are new to them as the Business School expands. I'm meeting with University counsel Tuesday next week so would like to go in armed with how other universities handle these clubs. 

Thanks for sharing how it is done in your university.  

Rosanna Garcia
Beswick Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship
Worcester Polytechnic Institution