Brian Thompson smiled as he opened the shiny new door of the $8.3 million, two-story building. UWM’s newest addition to campus, the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center and Welcome Center, sits on the corner of Maryland Avenue and Kenwood Boulevard. Natural light filters in through the glass windows that make up the entire south side of the building.

“Welcome to UWM’s new front door,” said Thompson, director of the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center.

Its innovative space sets it apart from other buildings on campus, according to Thompson. Students and community leaders are expected to use all 24,000 square feet of the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center for networking and collaboration. Each room pours into the next. The center’s creators hope that any student, regardless of their major, will learn entrepreneurship and create stronger connections with the community through this program, according to Thompson.

The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center a month before completion.

The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center was kicked off by a $10 million donation from Marianne and Sheldon Lubar in 2015, the second donation of its kind given to UWM by the Lubars. In 2006, they donated $10 million for professorships and student scholarships.

More than $5 million private donations came from Ted and Mary Kellner, UWM alum and entrepreneur Jerry Jendusa, We Energies and other private donors, according to Program Manager Nicole Green.

A Grind coffee shop is housed in the new building.

In addition to the donations, the UW System also pitched in, funding $10 million from its contingency reserve to cover construction costs. This funding has prompted some concerns among students.

“This transfer was outlined in the UW System 2014-15 Program Revenue Balances Report as presented to the Board of Regents in October of 2015,” said UW System Public Information Officer Mark Pitsch in an email. “The UW System maintains a contingency reserve for emergency and other expenses that may include savings from utility costs and fringe benefits.”

Many students are fond of the entrepreneurial program at UWM but believe funds could have been better spent elsewhere. Jack Kovnesky, a sophomore, believes the UW System money could have gone to repairing buildings that already exist on campus.  

“$10 million has a lot of potential for other areas of campus,” said Kovnesky. “As known, the chemistry building has the structural capacity half of what it should be. Chemistry is a requirement for nearly every major in the natural sciences or in STEM fields; it would’ve been nice to see that money diverted to something more encompassing than the entrepreneurship center. Not to mention the entrepreneurship center was proposed and broke ground well before Evers’s budget proposal that finally addressed the chemistry building.”

In this year’s capital budget, Gov. Tony Evers proposed $2.5 billion on public projects and proposed the following funds for UWM: $130 million for the chemistry building, $41 million for renovations in the student union, $7 million for additions to the Klotsche Center and $103 million for the engineering building.

The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center and Welcome Center

In response to criticisms, Thompson said resources are a concern for everyone and tradeoffs have to be made. Subsequently, construction began in January 2018, according to Thompson. However, before it could begin, problems surfaced. The soil where the building now stands was softer than anticipated, according to a BizTimes article. To resolve the issue, additional excavating was required, and an engineered fill was put in place, increasing construction costs by $500,000.

The building was designed after innovative college buildings across the U.S. The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center leaders traveled around the country to see other universities’ most innovative buildings, making stops at Northwestern University, Stanford’s Design School and many others.

“We have stolen the best ideas from everywhere,” said Thompson. “When we visited Northwestern’s six-month-old building, the first thing the project manager said was ‘I’m going to tell you what I’d do differently now that it’s complete,’ and we all started taking notes as fast as we could.”

The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center resembles Stanford’s Design School the most. Constructed in 2004, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, also known as the d.school, is a collaborator’s dream come true. The abundance of open space for design students to work together complements the instructional conference rooms for more intimate settings. The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center mirrors this building design.

As UWM’s “new front door,” Thompson believes it was appropriate to move the Welcome Center from its old location in Vogel Hall, a 109-year-old building, to the new Lubar Entrepreneurship Center. He hopes that it sends the message that entrepreneurship should be a part of everyone’s experience at UWM.

The majority of the first floor contains innovative space which can be divided into two large areas by a garage door installation. One projector is aimed at an entire wall, so that if the garage door is up, everyone on the first floor can be engaged and see what is going on.

The inside of the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center has a lot of open space, allowing for easy collaboration.

A balcony lines the entire second floor so that students, faculty and others can also be involved in first floor activities if, for example, there’s a speaker, workshop or any other group activity. On the second floor is a space with more classrooms, which are set up to look like conference rooms to give students a more professional feel. The labs on the second floor are for prototyping products and software, while the offices are for the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center staff and other faculty members.

An instructional room on the second floor

Brian Thompson has been at UWM for 14 years and is a co-creator and president of the UWM Research Foundation, which handles patenting and licensing for faculty, which led to faculty startups. This ultimately produced the idea of student entrepreneurship and the Student Startup Challenge. The Student Startup Challenge encourages students to be confident with their entrepreneurial ideas and enables them to discuss them with potential customers to allow them to build prototypes.

Lubar Entrepreneurship Center Director Brian Thompson

Entrepreneurship isn’t new to UWM. The Student Startup Challenge has been around since 2012. The purpose of the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center is to provide a physical space designated solely for students to work on their entrepreneurial and business ideas.

Fabien Edjou spoke highly of the Student Startup Challenge, which led him to turn his ideas into a business called LeanServ, LLC. Through the program, he was able to invent and patent LeanVO, a closet accessory organizer. He’s currently still working on the project and is focused on building an inventory in order to start selling his products.

“What brought me to want to start my own company was because I retired from the military,” said Edjou. “I owned so many belts because of it, and I could not find a way to organize my belts.”

Fabien Edjou

Edjou, a retired Army Officer, served for 14 years before enrolling at UWM in 2015 to pursue a degree in supply chain and operation management. Edjou didn’t stop at the Student Startup Challenge. He organized the Milwaukee Lean Entrepreneurs Meetup, a group made for networking and speaking freely about entrepreneurial ideas to resolve the issue of having to be a student to be in entrepreneurial programs. His goal is to share his entrepreneurial knowledge with people who perhaps didn’t have the opportunity to go to a university.

Edjou also started the Million Millionaires Change Agents, which focuses on bringing awareness to financial independence. The group’s fundamental belief is that everyone ought to be happy and that the key to happiness is freedom, according to Edjou.

“Entrepreneurship is a universal skill. Being an entrepreneur is just thinking to solve a problem,” said Edjou. “It pushes you to do things that you may have never thought of. If you have a passion for something, you should do it and explore. It’s a vision you have, that nobody else has.”

The Student Startup Challenge isn’t the only entrepreneurial program at UWM. gBeta Milwaukee is a business startup accelerator program lead by gener8tor, a national startup accelerator. The program will be housed by the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center and sponsored by Northwestern Mutual.

Scale Up Milwaukee has also partnered with the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center to establish “high-growth, high-impact” entrepreneurship in southeast Wisconsin, according to its website. Similarly, the center’s partnership with BizStarts Milwaukee will assist new entrepreneurs to help them not only survive but also thrive.

The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center has also connected with Shorewood Schools, the School District of New Berlin and Pathways High. The partnership with the Shorewood School District leads to a Teaching Fellows program, which will provide teachers with professional development. This allows them to incorporate innovative educational opportunities for their students, called Authentic Learning, according to the UWM Research Foundation website. In a partnership with Pathways High, the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center offered an entrepreneurship class to high school students, where they can sell products. In New Berlin, the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center has connected schools with the Advanced Innovation and Design Program (iAID). iAID is a mentorship program for high school students.

“iAID expands entrepreneurial skills…to challenge students to develop skills in problem solving, design thinking and project managements,” said the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center website.

The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center has also partnered with The Commons, the Midwest Energy Research Consortium and the Inception Health Innovation Tournament. These partnerships with school districts, businesses and startup companies are all part of the ecosystem that the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center will submerge its students in so that they have the best entrepreneurial experiences possible.  

All of the programs and opportunities can now be made possible with the grand opening on May 8. Chancellor Mark Mone gave the opening remarks. The program featured the Lubar family, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, Mayor Tom Barrett and others. Each speaker praised the Lubar family and other donors.

Community and business leaders Mayor Tom Barrett, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Lubar family and others sat front row for the opening ceremony.

“The entire Lubar family understands what good citizenship is about,” said Mayor Barrett. “It is important to invest in community, and it is important to invest in the future of this state. They’re not sitting on a beach out there or playing bingo.”

The packed building was sweltering with hundreds in attendance, standing shoulder to shoulder. Hors d’oeuvres were served throughout the evening. The theme of the night, “making ideas soar,” was supplemented with paper airplanes hanging from the ceiling which were thrown once the ceremony ended. Together, Marianne and Sheldon Lubar struck a gong with a mallet to ring in the official launch of the new building.

People lined the first and second floor of the center for the opening ceremony.

“So many people did so many things to make this possible, which is why we’re here today, making a new generation of leaders possible,” said Lt. Gov. Barnes.

Following the remarks of the opening ceremony, the fourth annual UWM Innovators Expo gave attendees a look at current entrepreneurial work. Students, faculty and community members showcased their projects and startups in booths.

Collin Wallace is a local entrepreneur who owns Chillwaukee, an ice pop company, with his girlfriend. They’re going into their third year with their business and attended Pantherfest last year and were asked to attend the opening of the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center. Both Wallace and his girlfriend attended UWM.

“We pay our mortgage with popsicles,” said Wallace.

Collin Wallace

The Lubar Entrepreneurship Center is a key ingredient in benefiting UWM and the surrounding community, according to Delta Sigma Pi President Tyler Junk. He believes entrepreneurs are the driving force in businesses and credits the Lubar family for bringing that drive to UWM.

“The Lubar family had a vision of UWM becoming an accredited business university,” said Junk. “Their donations supporting our business school in Wisconsin’s largest corporate city allows business students to obtain a valuable education while connecting with professionals early on. Having the LEC bringing ideas to life is going to be a game changer for business at UWM. I’m looking forward to exploring their opportunities for students, student organizations and local companies.”