Want to be your own boss? Turn your ideas into a livelihood? Make your dreams become reality? So do the students involved in the ETSU’s Entrepreneurs Club. This energetic group meets six times during the year, bringing in successful entrepreneurs from the community to provide practical knowledge and inspiration.Faculty adviser Dr. Andy Czuchry, holder of the AFG Industries Chair in Business and Technology is enthusiastic about the creativity and energy displayed by club members.

He gives much of the credit for the organization’s success to Allison Stewart, the group’s outgoing president, a graduate student who traces an entrepreneurial streak in her family back to the 1700s, and also incoming president, William Barrett. He is a junior and the founder of two companies, including Water-wood Wonders, for which he recently won first place in the Mid-Mississippi Region Entre-preneur Contest.

The most recent club meeting featured local entrepreneur Sarah Pope, creator of Piggybank Express.

Using knowledge gained through ETSU’s business incubator and master’s of business administration programs the company makes piggybanks distributed by Sak’s, Proffitt’s and Parisian stores. Her enterprise and her account of the process involved in beginning a small business were recently featured as the cover story in The Business Journal of Tri-Cities Tennes-see/Virginia.

The club maintains a web site at http://www.bus.etsu/studentorg/entrclub/index.htm and welcomes those with the entrepreneurial spirit.

For more information, call Czuchry at 439-7701.

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