The Central Coast Business Symposium is set for tonight at the Clark Center in Arroyo Grande. It will feature a variety of different speakers. After the success of last year’s symposium, host Andre, Morris and Buttery, a Central Coast law firm, decided to hold another.

The symposium is co-sponsored by Barnett Cox and Associates, Morris Garritano, Taylor Frigon Capital Management and Poor Richard’s Press. It will begin with a discussion moderated by Jonathan York, Cal Poly head of the Orfalea College of Business. He came to Cal Poly last year and is the former C.E.O. of multiple organizations. York will be facilitating talks between Cal Poly alumnus Ty Safreno, co-founder Trust Automation; Randy Flamm, co-founder of IQMS software developers and Steve Newell, co-owner of Windset Farms. He said he likes the variety of sources the round table is going to offer and wants to take a look at local success stories.

“We want to look at what it takes to grow a business in this area. What are the success factors?” York said.

York also said that he is looking forward to listening to fellow symposium speaker Lloyd Greif.

Greif is the founder of Greif and Company, a venture capital firm from Southern California. He will give his insights on the obstacles and financing options that businesses will face. Greif will also touch on how small businesses can gain access to and secure capital money to help with start-up costs.

Mike Gibson, firm administrator at Andre, Morris and Buttery said he is excited for tonight’s symposium line-up. The topics being discussed have different focuses than those of last year’s symposium, held in honor of the firm’s 60-year anniversary.

This year, the keynote speaker for the night is Stanford professor Walter “Woody” Powell. Powell is an education professor who also teaches courses in sociology, organizational behavior, management science and communication. Powell will lecture on why different industries thrive in locations where others do not. He will also speak on what types of industries can thrive on the Central Coast and in conjunction with the university.

York said a lot of business could potentially do well in this area.

“I think small technological start-ups have a lot of potential here with the help of mentors and community (sponsors) to help with a lot of start-up fees,” he said.

He added that the panel is excited to hear what the audience has to say.

“I think it will be a good variety of sources and audience input,” he said. “That way, we can try and get a good understanding of where people think we’re going.”

Among the estimated 300 attendants will be business senior and Cal Poly Entrepreneurs Club member Jessie Becker.

“I am going to the symposium because it seems like it will be a great opportunity to hear business people speak specifically about business here on the Central Coast,” Becker said. “I am also excited to be able to see Dr. York as the moderator. It will be interesting to see him interact with fellow business people and entrepreneurs in ‘the real world’ as opposed to facilitating discussion in class among Cal Poly students.”

Gibson said he thinks this symposium will be helpful to the community and will shed light on major issues that business people, both current and future, can learn from.

“I believe we need to do as much as we can to make the economy here as robust as possible.”

Becker said that she is excited about the chance to talk to other people in her field while at the conference.

“I hope to hear some lively and interesting interactions between successful people that I hope to emulate someday,” Becker said.

Phong Dang won the William Randolph Hearst California State University Trustees’ Award. Courtesy Photo

Phong Dang is not unlike many Cal Poly students in that he doesn’t like to talk in class. But with a 3.779 GPA, it’s not because he doesn’t know the answer.

Dang, 24, was the 2009 California Polytechnic State University recipient of the William Randolph Hearst California State University (CSU) Trustees’ Award for Outstanding Achievement. The award and a $3,000 scholarship is given to one student from each CSU campus. Applicants must have a minimum GPA of 3.0; demonstrate financial need, commitment to community service and ability to overcome adversity; and be enrolled full-time for the 2009-10 academic year.

Dang is a finance senior and economics minor from the Orfalea College of Business.

“My family wanted me to study to be a pharmacist, but I just love business,” he said. “I think I like to do business because I want to have the knowledge and education to take risks and get good results.”

His grandfather sponsored Dang, his dad and two brothers, Phu, 22, and Phuc, 20, to come to the U.S. from Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam in 2005. His mom couldn’t come for family and business reasons, but they hope to bring her here in the next two years. His dad sends money to her from Houston, Texas, where he and Dang’s brothers have lived since 2006.

Phu Dang said he admires his brother for wanting to help people.

“When he grows up, maybe he wants to be a rich man. Rich in money and rich in love also. He wants to have much money to help himself, his family and the poor people,” Phu said in an e-mail.

Dang may not talk much or be social, Phu said, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know anything. The three brothers studied math in Vietnam, so they have an advantage over other students, he said, but they still study hard because there is more to learn. Dang said he studies more than 40 hours a week.

“The things that members of my family want him to do is he try to study by his best, try to become a successful person, and the one who can bring happiness to family and everybody surround him,” Phu said.

Mathematics professor John Martin taught Phong in a precalculus class when he began studying at Santa Rosa Junior College in fall 2005. Though it has been a few years and he’s had hundreds of students since then, he remembers Dang because his English wasn’t good, but his math was excellent, Martin said.

Dang was very quiet in class, not answering or asking questions, he said. And unlike other students who attend office hours hoping to pry answers from their professors, Dang came to Martin to have words clarified. It was unusual, Martin said, because he wanted to do the work himself.

“He was a very quiet student,” he said. “But I could tell as soon as I saw the work that he understood the mathematics.”

Dang finished second in Martin’s class, which the professor said is a remarkable achievement for someone with a language barrier. Martin even tried to convince him to get a mathematics degree and said he’d love to Dang come back to the junior college.

“He was hardworking, dependable, all those things faculty love in students,” he said.

In 2008, Dang was admitted to University of California, San Diego and UC Santa Barbara but chose Cal Poly for its finance major, small class sizes and the friendly small-town community vibe. He plans to head to the East Coast to get his master’s and then he wants to work for a financial firm.

While he currently plans to return to work in Vietnam in about 10 years, he said his family thinks he’ll stay here.

“Nothing is perfect, 100 percent sure. I think I will go back, but not for sure,” he said.

Benita Yannine Robledo-Espinoza was the 2008 Cal Poly recipient. According to her profile on the CSU Trustees’ Award Web site, she was raised by her single mother, an immigrant who worked as a waitress to support her three children. When her mother’s business failed, her family stayed at a homeless shelter throughout her eighth-grade school year. Robledo-Espinoza made honor-roll throughout her academic career and was the first of her family to attend college. Like Dang, she studied business and planned to work for an accounting firm after graduation.

Even with a high GPA, an award and a $3,000 scholarship, Dang doesn’t boast about his accomplishments.

“I think I’m just lucky because there are other students who are better than me, smarter than me,” Dang said.

Raising awareness has been a focus for the Foundation and the group has looked to students and the greater community to spread the word. Courtesy photo.

She has short brown hair in the photograph. She’s wearing a white dress that reaches past her knees and she’s sitting in a new, red wheelchair — the first she’s ever had.

The photo of the girl, a 2-year-old from Oaxaca, Mexico, who was paralyzed from birth, is part of the Mano a Mano, hand in hand, fundraising exhibit by the Cal Poly Wheelchair Foundation opening tonight at the San Luis Obispo Art Center.

The exhibit is one of the closing events for the Foundation, which has given more than 4,000 wheelchairs to impoverished people in Africa, Asia, South and North America in the past eight years.

Business administration senior Helya Naghibi has served as project manager for a year.

“I never thought I’d have the opportunity to impact someone’s life as much and I’m very lucky to be part of it,” she said.

The project began in 2001 when Kenneth Behring, founder of the Wheelchair Foundation, spoke to a group of 230 Cal Poly students and offered them a chance to get involved. Marketing Area Chair Lynn Metcalf of the Oralea College of Business, was at the presentation and saw the benefit for the Cal Poly campus.

It would let students learn and apply marketing skills while they helped others, she said. “It offered us the opportunity to make an impact on people’s life.”

Metcalf started the Cal Poly Wheelchair Foundation with an initial team of nine students. In the eight years that the Foundation has operated, some 140 students have participated in raising money and delivering wheelchairs to poor communities.

Raising awareness has been a focus for the Foundation and the group has looked to students and the greater community to spread the word.

The photographs taken by two students from the Foundation’s trip to Oaxaca will be available for purchase at tonight’s free exhibit.

“I feel that by putting on this photography exhibit, we are spreading an awareness,” Sara Tollefson, one of the photographers, said.

Tollefson, an art and design senior with a photography concentration, tried to capture the everyday experiences of the people.

“There are people with lives much different than our own. These people do not have the many luxuries we have, such as running water,” she said.

Greg Smith, also an art and design senior with a photography concentration, is displaying 20 of the 40 photos in the exhibit. Smith said he was surprised by the poverty.

“Everything people owned was with them,” he said, recalling a market the group visited.

The wheelchairs come in two versions, an all-terrain model with mountain bike tires and then a standard model with hard, rubber wheels. The students, recognizing the poverty of the people, also provided a repair kit.

“The chairs come with self-repair tools that can take care of minor problems, if necessary,” Naghibi said.

The Foundation is planning a final trip to deliver wheelchairs. Money raised from donations and sales of prints will go to wheelchair donations in Panama, Naghibi said.

Even though the Foundation is ending, its impact and lessons will continue, she said. “It has changed countless lives. Just because it is coming to a close at Cal Poly, doesn’t mean it will be forgotten.”

Stock image

To add to the laundry list of successful businesses founded by Cal Poly graduates, the Cal Poly Entrepreneurship Club invites students from different colleges to learn about the fundamentals of starting a business during bi-monthly meetings on campus, including one tonight at 8 p.m. in room 133 of the Mathematics and Science building.

The club was originally inspired during associate professor Jonathan York’s Business 310 “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” class last spring.

York has 19 years of entrepreneurship experience, beginning when he founded Fourth Channel, Inc., a Web-based supply chain software company. He became a professor to impart his knowledge and passion for entrepreneurship upon students, he said. When he found out the entrepreneurship club at Cal Poly had disbanded, he asked his students if they would be interested in reviving it.

He said the officers are treating the club like a new business, which means making decisions, one of York’s favorite parts about being an entrepreneur.

“It’s your baby and you make the decisions, and those decisions determine whether you succeed or fail. There are risks but there also big rewards, financially but also personally,” he said.

Business junior and club president Luke Richter said the club’s purpose is to bring students interested in innovations and inventions together so they can develop their ideas.

“We’re trying to get people aware of the possible networking opportunities between different colleges and get people interested in the entrepreneur process, especially with the economy the way it is,” Richter said.

Business senior and the club’s vice president Ian Drogin said they are looking for motivated students who want to have an active role in forming the club to meet their specific needs.

“The club will help provide networking support, a forum for discussing ideas and collaborating on creating new products for either scholastic or commercial uses and education from guest speakers,” he said.

Some of the topics officers and guest speakers will cover include how to create an idea, start a business and network.

The club will also be working in connection with the Ray Sherr Venture Challenge, allowing members to compete for prize money by developing and presenting new products and services.

Industrial technology chair Lou Tornatzky said the club is an excellent way for people across the campus to share ideas and promote entrepreneurship; involvement will positively affect members’ career plans.

“I think some students envision a career or direction that will involve some sort of entrepreneurship; they can only gain from participation in this,” he said.

The club is looking to produce tangible results with projects on campus and in the community.

“Right now we’re trying to get people together, engineers and business people, to do senior projects,” Richter said.

Richter is currently collaborating on his senior project with two mechanical engineering seniors, Billie Fritz and Toby Lloyd. Sparked by a need from avid motorcyclists Fritz and Lloyd, the trio is working on a motorcycle headlight that will make riding around corners at night safer.

Fritz said that York and mechanical engineering professor Joseph Mello brought the engineers and Richter together in an attempt to produce senior projects that could evolve into an entrepreneurship.

Lloyd said the collaboration between the engineering students and business student has benefited the project, which for the engineering students will last three quarters.

“Business and engineering are a really good combination. They have to work together a lot and we don’t get to do that in the College of Engineering,” he said.

If the prototype is efficient and they receive positive reviews from testers, Fritz said they will consider developing their project into a business by altering the headlight to fit different motorcycle brands and models.

Entrepreneurs from Cal Poly will speak at a meeting tonight, including Kyle Wiens from iFixit and other small companies started by Cal Poly students.

Owners Wiens and Luke Soules started iFixit, which sends customers parts and instructions to fix their Apple products, in their Yosemite dorm room in 2003.

They had to maintain a professional image while attending school, which was the hardest part about starting their business, Soules said.

While he and Wiens started their company on their own, “It’s certainly very helpful to be able to talk to people who are either trying to start something or who have started something instead of going about it on your own,” he said.

The Entrepreneurship Club is a great idea, Soules said, because it helps students who are looking to start their own businesses.

“I think it’s a great idea. There are lots of people who would love to stay in the San Luis area but can’t. This encourages people to make their own career instead of getting a job with an established company.”

Soules’ best tip for student entrepreneurs: “Pick a business you care about and are really passionate about, not the one you think will make the most money. You’ll enjoy it a whole lot more.”

The club is in the process of creating a Web page, but does have an e-mail address: cpentrepreneurs@calpoly.edu.

As of July 15, business and economics students will no longer be able to declare more than one concentration, announced Brian Tietje, associate dean of the Orfalea College of Buisness, Friday in an e-mail sent to all affected students.

Students who already have more than one concentration on record will have to choose only one by October 2nd. If they fail to do so, a concentration will be selected for them, wrote Tietje.

For some students this might mean that numerous classes already completed will no longer count toward anything.

Although this will affect many students’ academic plan, Tietje explains that limiting students to one concentration must be done for financial reasons.

“Given the extraordinary constraints on our fiscal resources…our top priority is to ensure that every student in our College can complete his or her degree and concentration on time,” wrote Tietje. “By narrowing your concentration choice to one, you are enabling us to achieve this priority for everyone.”

In addition to having students select only one concentration, the College also reserves the right to drop students from any classes that do not count toward their one concentration, wrote Tietje.

Students affected by this announcement include the following concentrations: accounting, entrepreneurship, financial management, information systems, international business, marketing management, management, packaging and logistics, quantitative economics, and real estate economics.

Does this include you? What do you think about it?

In Response to “Bill could force Poly Corp. to release records”:

Let’s face it. Bonnie Murphy does not care about me. She does not care about you. She also does not care about the thousands of students on this campus, their financial need, or their academic requirements. Bonnie Murphy, executive director of the Cal Poly Corporation, cares about her paycheck.

As a student here for a long time, I have developed a certain taste and an “understanding,” if you will, for the entities that run Cal Poly. Don’t get me wrong, I love this school and I think it is probably one of the better managed public schools anywhere, but I am constantly shocked by the little “corporations” and “foundations” that seem to sneak into the beautiful concept of affordable public education. These actually not-so-little auxiliary organizations at Cal Poly have always made me wonder a little bit about what kind of place I go to school and what is really going on behind (besides incorrect balance sheets) the tinted doors of Starr Lee, Cal Poly Corporation’s legal counsel’s, office building. These people and these organizations find it very easy to prey off the flow of student money in education. What really gets to me is that this all happens in broad daylight with a smile, a pat on the back, and assurances that this is an investment in your future and that you can make that money back later.

Let’s take Campus Dining as an example. I don’t think anybody is under the impression that the food is good. And yet, impossibly, the Corporation entices new students here by publishing statements about their food like “gourmet” and “affordable,” all while claiming that forcing freshmen students to buy exorbitantly priced meal plans somehow “allows more time to focus on studying, exploring personal interests, and engaging in community activities (Campus Dining Web site).” They don’t mention anything in there about exploring explosive diarrhea and I’m pretty sure I could eat a steak every night off campus for those ridiculous plan prices. (The real winner is that you’re not even done being ripped off yet, they then proceed to charge two of the Plus Dollars they forced you to buy for a yogurt, which is greater than 200 percent of the retail price.)

And they do all this without paying taxes. Unbelievable.

A second example is the house of theft on the hill. I’m talking about Sage Restaurant. Has anyone else noticed that they’ve repainted that place three times? Is it because Bonnie Murphy didn’t like the color? Has anyone noticed that the menu prices there are preposterously high for serving sizes so miniscule that students simply cannot afford to eat there? ($12 for two tacos a la carte.)

How do we know that these changes weren’t in fact exacted at eliminating clientele, because the place is subsidized by taxpayer dollars and Tom Welton, director of Campus Dining, would rather work less hours?
If Bonnie Murphy is so interested in helping students and proving that she’s out here for something other than her own needs, then why in world does she need to hide the Cal Poly Corporation’s balance sheet? She didn’t make a single argument during her interview in the article “Bill could force Poly Corp. to release records” that made sense.

“We’re just concerned about people dissecting what we’re doing.” Did she really say that? I’ll bet you’re concerned, Bonnie.

And Starr Lee’s comment that he doesn’t want to spend the “time and effort” to “(deal) with people who don’t understand the complexities of business” is absurd and laughable — we have a College of Business here!

Institutions sheltered from taxes should be transparent. Period. Let’s all work together to get rid of obscure auxiliary organizations and make this a better, more affordable and more transparent place to go to school. I want an education, not financial rape. Let’s get rid of these scams that sit in broad daylight and let’s encourage our Senators to sign Senate Bill 218. It’s time for a little more honesty around here.

Darin Grandfield is a materials engineering graduate student and a Mustang Daily guest columnist.