Toni Glasscoe means business.

As Lansing Community College’s Director of Career Preparation and K-12 Articulation, Glasscoe’s goal is to infuse everyone at LCC with the entrepreneurial spirit.

“This is a campus-wide initiative. We target students who are welding students, massage students, early childhood development students - anyone interested in starting a business has an avenue to do that here,” said Glasscoe. Like many colleges in our nation, LCC has launched an entrepreneurship curriculum designed to prepare students to own businesses by helping them to identify a specialty area coupled with entrepreneurship; the steps to developing a business plan; financing, launching the business; and managing a new business.

However, entrepreneurship programs in our region are engaged in the Mid Michigan Innovation Team, and each is backed by this network of comrades working together toward the success of the region’s entrepreneurs at every level of business.

In effect, colleges like LCC have become portals through which entrepreneurs find their passion and connect with other regional partners as their needs for business support services grow.

For example, LCC is working with the Mid-Michigan Intermediate School Districts, the Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center, and Saginaw Valley State University to create a web of support for entrepreneurs so that there are programs available to entrepreneurs at every step of launching their venture.

In addition, Glasscoe continuously combs the MMIT looking for new ideas for entrepreneurship curriculum, fresh markets for business, innovative technologies to enhance business growth, and opportunities for new partnerships around the region. A self-identified “intra-preneur,” Glasscoe lets no challenge go undefeated in her pursuit to transform the region’s economy through the creation of fresh businesses and new industries.

Stories like this are becoming common in our region, as the MMIT finds innovative ways to share the region’s many assets. To learn more about the region’s resources in entrepreneurship, join the Entrepreneurship Learning Community on November 13, at 10 am at the Genesys Conference and Banquet Center of Genesys Regional Health System in Grand Blanc.