Baylor's Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization (CEO) represents students from all across Baylor's campus and seeks to promote ingenuity, creativity, and, of course, entrepreneurship. Baylor alumna-founded Young Chefs Academy (YCA), a worldwide kids cooking school franchise company, encourages creativity and discovery in children while safely teaching them how to cook. A fun but purposeful collaborative relationship between these two organizations has led to the creation of an exciting competition.

Baylor's CEO Chapter has teamed up with Young Chefs Academy founders Julie Burleson and Suzy Nettles to put together an exciting college contest to help launch Young Chefs Academy's latest marketing initiative, "Kids Take Over The Kitchen" (KTOK) back-to-school campaign. This initiative promotes greater child and teen involvement in the kitchen, confidence-building cooking skills, and encourages families to spend more time together at the dinner table, all while having fun. To kick off the campaign, Young Chefs is calling all college students across the country to cook up a winning video with the "KTOK" College Video Contest, for a grand prize of $5,000.

Entries should be original, thirty seconds in length and deliver Young Chefs' core messages while creating a humorous commercial worthy of viral hits. Applicants should follow the contest guidelines on Young Chefs Academy's site and make sure that their videos incorporate the fun and relatable messages that Young Chefs Academy advances every day.

Registration for the contest must be received by July 11, 2011 and the deadline for entries is August 1, 2011. Entries must be in the proper format (WMV, MOV, MP3, or MP4) and include the proper paperwork.

For more information, see the Young Chefs Academy website. Email questions to info@youngchefsacademy.com.

Dr. Kevin Ludlum, Executive Director of Development for Baylor's Hankamer School of Business and School of Engineering and Computer Science, has deep roots in the ag business. He saw an opportunity to capitalize on existing infrastructure in that industry to shape an exciting plan to produce alternative energy while at the same time offer healthy returns to investors. Dr. Ludlum decided to participate in Baylor's Advanced Invention to Venture (AI2V) workshop to help him take his idea down the path to commercialization.

AI2V is a highly acclaimed, four-day intensive workshop for technology startup teams that provides instruction, exercises, pitching and coaching, complete with real-time feedback from Baylor Faculty coaches and a panel of experienced entrepreneurs and investors from the Waco area. Attendees engage in Supercoach Entrepreneurial Training, a methodology that was designed to help inventors and innovators learn the entrepreneurial skills they need to successfully market their technology product or service and attract the resources necessary to make the venture happen.

The workshop provides a unique opportunity for participants to define their business and clarify objectives, as well as learn how to concisely share those ideas with others. According to Dr. Ludlum, "the program leads technology entrepreneurs to think in new ways about their venture. Questions that you hadn't thought to ask before open your eyes to changes that you need to make. AI2V takes the rose-colored glasses off and has you validate the real value of your project."

Upon completing the workshop, technology teams can apply to work with student teams in Baylor's Technology Entrepreneurship class. This option is as important to the Baylor students as it is to the technology entrepreneurs. Dr. Ludlum, who worked with a student team last Spring, believes that "for the student teams there is real value in being required at semester's end, to deliver a compelling fifteen-minute investor pitch that communicates in business language the technology, market, numbers and all other critical aspects that back up the commercialization plan. You can't put a dollar figure on the transformational value of the experience, for the entrepreneur, or, for the students."

For more information about AI2V at Baylor, see www.invention2venture.org/baylorai2v. For more information about Baylor's Technology Entrepreneurship Initiative program, see www.baylor.edu/TEI. Email questions to Greg_Leman@baylor.edu.

Baylor Entrepreneurship has long been a pioneer in the world of entrepreneurship education. Our success is largely due to the resources provided through our many alumni and educational partnerships. We are so grateful for these relationships and invite you to contact us if you are interested in joining us on our collaborative journeys.

Contact us at Entrepreneurship@baylor.edu.