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Just grow a thicker skin already. FRIDAY APRIL 22, 2016

The

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Reflector

131th YEAR ISSUE 49

THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY SINCE 1884

E-Center brings resources to entrepreneurs by Brad Robertson Managing Editor

Mississippi State University received an upgrade on Tuesday when the Entrepreneurship Center officially opened in McCool Hall. The center aims to help students pursuing ambitions related to starting their own business or building an idea into a business. Director of the E-Center, Eric Hill, said the center is meant to be a launchingoff point on campus for entrepreneurs. “The center, the new Center for Entrepreneurial Outreach, which is affectionately [abbreviated] C.E.O. is trying to be a home base for that, a central point on campus for any major to find a team or connect on a project,” Hill said. “Those are the three things we do, connect, learn and develop.” To help with the first of these tenants connecting, Jeffery Rupp, the outreach director, reaches out to businesses and communities around the state in order to provide services to them that can only be provided by the resources of the university. Three words appear on MSU’s seal: learning, service and research. Rupp said that he caters specifically to the service aspect of the seal by taking teams of about 30 MBA students and having them help people around the state with various aspects of running a business. He recalled

Sarah Dutton The Reflector

The dedication and ribbon-cutting ceremony recognizing the opening of the new Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach in the College of Business located in McCool Hall on Tuesday, April 19.

one story of helping a man whose town was wiped away by a tornado. The man was passionate about building tables, crafting them like art, but not about business. Rupp and his team of MBA students helped the man get a marketing plan up and going to sell his tables. “He has re-opened in Aberdeen,” Rupp said, eyeing his hand-crafted desk, “and he has a bunch of employees. He took

this table up to the Tupelo furniture market, and now he has people outside of the state interested in his work. He said he wouldn’t be in business today had we not helped him.” Rupp said the E-Center and money given to the entrepreneurship program at MSU will help him start to reach some bigger goals. “One thing we did get was a 100,000 dollar grant from the Appalachian Regional

Commission, A.R.C.,” Rupp said. “It was for technology. It’s not economical for me to drive around the state to find entrepreneurs and try to mentor that, from a time standpoint and a money standpoint. My next step is to try and step up a virtual entrepreneur mentoring network with the technology (in the E-Center).” Having a virtual network, Rupp said, would

allow him to reach out to people around the state without having to leave Starkville, or rather without him having to leave the technology in the E-Center. Rupp said he has one even loftier goal of working with the College of Architecture to gut and renovate a building in the Delta to encourage urban renewal. He admitted such a project would require everyone to be completely

“plugged in” and to take weekly trips to keep the hypothetical project up to par. Learning is the second of the center’s tenets. Hill said he feels that the location and look of the center is the first step in drawing people in. “It’s on the campus tour map now,” Hill said. “The idea was to make it feel as much like Silicon Valley in Mississippi as possible.” E-CENTER, 2

MSU Car of the Future revealed by Savannah Taggart Staff Writer

Sarah Dutton The Reflector

The Studentʼs for a Sustainable Campus (SSC) are set to debut four bicycle repair stations around campus during this yearʼs Earth Day celebration. According to Mississippi State Universityʼs website, these stations are located at Fresh Food Company, Colvard Student Union, the Sanderson and the Hunter Henry Center. Abbey Wallace, junior landscape architecture major, created the project alongside Preston Sorrell, Michael Keating and Amer Mahadin with support from MSUʼs Green Fund. Wallace said the university reached out to the SSC after the Green Fund had reached $5,000 to see how they felt the money should be spent. She said her team proposed bike repair stations in response to the campusʼ master plan to becoming a pedestrian and biking campus. “We have a high number of students who cycle on our campus everyday,” Wallace said, “and we felt the need to give back to their sustainable efforts as well as provide a convenient repair station that might encourage others to begin biking.” Kaitlin OʼDougherty

Weather

Reflections

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

HI: 77 LO: 56 SKY: Partly cloudy

HI: 79 LO: 56 SKY: Sunny

HI: 80 LO: 59 SKY: Sunny

POP: 0%

POP: 0%

Scott Sincoff, Campus Connect Forecast POP:40% (Department of Geosciences)

Researchers from Mississippi State University’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS) showcased their “car of the future” at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress last week in Detroit, Michigan. This two-day event is held to bring together the newest, most cuttingedge technology in the automotive industry today, and MSU’s lighter, greener hybrid vehicle, which can travel over 100 miles on a single gallon of gas, lives up to that standard. Matthew Doude, business development officer and research assistant at CAVS, said the reaction to the ‘car of the future’ was phenomenal. “Everyone was, I think, universally impressed with what Mississippi State did,” Doude said. “We were defi nitely one of the stars of the show, and we were there beside Ford and Toyota, but I think we had as much, if not more,

FORECAST: Expect Fri. morning to begin with showers followed by clearing skies in the afternoon. Skies will be sunny for the rest of the weekend.

Hunter Hart Courtesy Photo

Center for Advanced Vehicular Sytemsʼ ʻcar of the futureʼ showcased in Detroit, Michigan, at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress.

traffic than anyone there.” Michelle Price, an engineering student who worked on the project, said that she is grateful to contribute to this project that is helping put MSU on the map in terms of research capabilities in the automotive engineering world. “We had many comments at the show in Detroit about not knowing Mississippi was capable of what we accomplished,” Price said. “This project along with our Ecocar team has defi nitely gained us some recognition and will continue to do so, especially in the hybrid technology realm.” The car was engineered

and designed by a team of MSU faculty, students and alumni working to lead the way in energy independence. It features control algorithms, which recognize driving patterns and can predict future ones, a custom cast magnesium sub-frame, which reduces the car’s weight by more than 40 percent, rear wheel torque vectoring, which is computer operated, creating significant performance advantages to the car’s traction, and a lightweight battery pack, which incorporates improved cell cooling through the use of proprietary cooling technologies. CAR, 2

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