Opening April, Lyles Center will complete Rec Center

By Umaymah Rashid
The Collegian

There’s more to the Recreation Center than just recreation. Included in the new Recreation complex the Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The 10,000 square feet center, located on the second floor facing Shaw Avenue, will begin operating the first week of April and open on April 19. Inside the center is a state-of-the-art classroom that seats 45 and will be used for entrepreneurial courses. Among other things, it is a creativity lab that has desks and chairs with wheels that allow for a variety of workshops, and a resource center for students.

The center includes eight hatchery rooms, which are offices used by students working to conduct and build their businesses. There is also office space for student and faculty workers, The Office for Economic and Community Development, and a boardroom with plasma screens and teleconference capabilities that Timothy Stearns, Director of the Lyles Center, describes as “the best in the Central Valley.”

Many students do not know anything about the center.

“I had no idea about the center,” Ahjie Lane, mass communication and journalism major, said.

Other students said they were not familiar with the Lyles Center.

“I heard a little something about it, but I don’t know what their purpose is or what they have to offer,” Mai Chou, a human resource major, said.

The objective of the center is to assist and provide resources for students and community members who are interested in entrepreneurial ventures as well as create a bridge between the community and Fresno State. The Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship offers numerous programs, services, and resources to the students, staff, and faculty of Fresno State, as well as the community as a whole.

The center has a $ 100 million venture capital fund to offer entrepreneur students. The fund is essentially money loaned to students wanting to create a student business. It also offers programs like the Kauffman Internship Program and the Entrepreneurship Leadership Program for High School students.

Events will also be frequent at the center. The Lyles Center provides New Valley InForum, which is described by its slogan, “innovative topics for innovative thinkers.” Topics such as “The Soul of Money,” which explores the human relationship with money and “Shaping Social Change,” which explains how to use the web to facilitate social change, are a few of the topics covered.

The Lyles Center is named after and partially funded by local business man William Lyles who has also supported many other facets of education in the Central Valley. Stearns, a Fresno State business professor, is also the Director of the Lyles Center. Stearns also founded the Institute for Developing Entrepreneurial Action and helped to build the Entrepreneurial program at Fresno State.

For more information about the new Fresno State Recreation Center, opening Friday, see the special insert on pages 5-8 of the newspaper.

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