SUNO gets approval for on-campus business incubator

The Louisiana Board of Regents at their June meeting in Baton Rouge approved Southern University at New Orleans’ (SUNO) request to build a $3 million on-campus business incubator. More than $2 million of the funding for the building has been pre-approved by the U.S. Department of Education and comes from a special Title III -College Cost Reduction and Access Act Program. The incubator will be located on the Lake Campus, close to the new College of Business & Public Administration building which is near completion and should be occupied during in the fall.

The state-of-the-art facility is expected to be completed within two years and will allow for a seamless interaction between classroom education and real-world entrepreneurs. The facility will also serve as office space for entrepreneurs and will contain faculty and staff offices.

SUNO officials expect the incubator to contribute greatly to the academic landscape of the University. “It will create an ideal environment for cross-disciplinary learning and entrepreneurial collaboration between business majors and students from other majors,” said Dr. Igwe Udeh, Dean of the College of Business & Public Administration. Udeh specifically points to students’ opportunities to start businesses in social service fields such as mental health, child protection, assisted living, daycare, adult literacy, inmate-to-society transition programs, chemical dependency education, and drug abuse counseling. SUNO is highly regarded for its social science programs, namely Social Work, Criminal Justice, and Substance Abuse Counseling.

This article originally published in the July 4, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.