Petrick Idea Center draws federal small-business leaders

By Grace Kim

Illinois Wesleyan University opened the Petrick Idea Center on its Bloomington campus in September, and the new facility hosted U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Dunlap, and Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler last week.

During the visit, Mannat Kandal, a senior psychology major, joined other students in a roundtable with Loeffler and LaHood. Kandal said they discussed starting and running a small business and developing an entrepreneurial mindset from college age.

She said the center brings people from many disciplines together and “opens up a huge new horizon for students.”

What can students build at the Petrick Idea Center?

“If I have any idea, I can easily come here and have access to a founder studio, experts in business, and find ways to connect my ideas to tangible solutions and be able to make something out of them,” Kandal said.

Kandal said the center houses studios ranging from a food lab to a wood shop. Ben Hage, the Petrick Idea Center’s director, said the facility can accommodate:

• Hackathons
• Fashion classes that design and fabricate clothing
• Woodshop projects

Hage said the center’s open space was designed to create informal encounters among students. “Students cannot come in and out of this building without running into each other. And so, that provides a ton of organic opportunities,” he said.

Kandal said she wants to connect fellow students with the center. She is also looking for ways to combine psychology and business to address community mental health: “I am exploring a lot of intersections with psychology and business, so [I’m] trying to find avenues to sort of explore mental health in a way that can be beneficial to the community,” she said.

Kandal also said the center brings her liberal-arts education into practical work on community and social impact, turning ideas into sustainable solutions through entrepreneurship and innovation.

For students, the practical value is access to shared tools, mentors and unexpected collaborators.

How will the center connect ideas with capital?

Hage told LaHood and Loeffler that Illinois Wesleyan University wants to establish an “angel investment network.” In a press release, he said: “Our goal is to create new opportunities for founders to access potential investment capital, the mentorship, expertise and relationships that can help their business grow.”

University President Sheahon Zenger said the university placed the center around its art building rather than treating entrepreneurship as solely a business or economics discipline. “We wanted to make sure that all things STEM and all things humanities and all things art were involved. And so, by putting it around the art building, you see the benefit of that already,” he said.

Zenger said he had taken part in 27 building developments. After seeing the Petrick Idea Center, he said: “This is the most creative I’ve ever seen, and on budget and on time.”

He said the center has been described as a “greenhouse of ideas,” but prefers another description: “a weight room for the mind.” He added, “Everyone gets to play here.”

Zenger said the students surely left LaHood and Loeffler impressed. “They each bring so much to the table,” he said.

For founders, the proposed next step is a structured route from campus work to angel capital.

What do small businesses need from federal policy?

Loeffler said the Small Business Administration lends, provides access to capital and supports counseling through Small Business Development Centers, or SBDCs. Institutions such as Illinois Wesleyan University host centers that advise small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs.

“We provide hundreds of millions of dollars of funding to this type of effort every single year to ensure that the resources are available to over 1,000 SBDCs across America,” Loeffler said.

Loeffler grew up about 15 miles west of Bloomington in Stanford. She said working in a family business from an early age remained a powerful influence on her career.

Loeffler identified two major obstacles for small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs:

• Fear of tax increases
• A need for skilled workers among businesses in growth mode

“That’s what’s exciting about places like [Illinois] Wesleyan University that [are] equipping the workforce of the future … whether it’s entrepreneurship or a career,” she said.

LaHood said the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, passed last year, was among efforts that helped small and medium-sized businesses grow. He said fuel prices, energy prices, taxes and regulation still require attention.

“Are there other things we need to work on related to the economy?” LaHood asked. “Of course. Fuel prices, energy prices, some of those other things, but from a tax perspective and a regulatory environment, which we continue to work on, those are really fundamental to the success of small businesses.”

LaHood said Illinois Wesleyan’s work will prepare students for an economy shaped by AI and quantum computing. After listening to Hage and the students, he concluded, “this is the future.” He added: “This ought to be the model for others as we look to the future.”

For U.S. small businesses, the near-term test is whether federal capital, counseling and policy relief can answer the need for skilled workers as AI and quantum computing reshape the economy.