Four students were awarded the Student Venture Seed Grant Monday for their business ventures as part of the Wiscontrepreneur program.
The SVS program will provide each student with $3,000 to help turn their start-up businesses into successful companies.
Charles Hoslet, UW-Madison Office of Corporate Relations managing director, said the program is designed to support students interested in pursuing entrepreneurial ventures.
""By encouraging the formation and development of viable businesses or nonprofit organizations by UW-Madison students, we're helping them convert their enthusiasm and ideas into sustainable ventures,"" he said in a statement.
One of the grant recipients, junior Travis Blomberg, will use the money to operate his Stripes Officiating Agency, a company that trains and provides officials for sporting events.
""The [grant] has given me the necessary funds to pay for an interactive website, business cards and other media needs,"" he said.
Another finalist, senior Anthony Hernandez, runs a web-development marketing firm and will use the money to ""purchase new computer hardware in order to design and program at a much faster rate and with much more creative freedom,"" he said in an e-mail.
According to the statement, two other students will receive grants, including Bryon Shannon, who runs a company that makes T-shirts sporting Midwest idioms, and Michael Garson, who operates Badger Trips.
""We think any one of our students, be they a journalist or a political science major, a dancer, or an athlete, can be an entrepreneur and perhaps start a business or bring entrepreneurial thinking into a different business,"" said Doug Bradley, assistant director of the OCR.
The announcement of the seed grant recipients comes just days after UW-Madison's graduate entrepreneurship program was named 11th in the country in a survey conducted by the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine. UW-Madison's undergraduate entrepreneurship program was ranked 16th.
