CBA Courts Small Business
The creation of a Small Business Development Center was logical outgrowth from the Small Business Institute. One of Muse's plans for the Center was for it eventually to be able to assess new products, perhaps from an engineering standpoint, but especially from a marketing feasibility standpoint.
The College of Business Administration Serves Small Business through its Rural Communities Program
UNO's College of Business has been involved with small businesses since 1975 when college faculty led by Professor David Ambrose helped businesses in the Nebraska town of Niobrara relocate to make room for a dam being built by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Niobrara experience served as a basis for later expansion of the College's small business assistance program. A year later, as noted earlier, the College participated with eight other U.S. college-based business development centers in a SBA pilot program directed toward developing business-government relationships.
Professor Ambrose believed in programs that would provide advisory service to any community in the state that needed such expertise. Much needed know-how was provided by CBA graduate students registered in the last nine hours of their respective MBA programs. These students were enrolled in the MBA Policy, Planning and Analysis course. Each student was assigned a business in a selected community. Their respective tasks were to analyze the economic characteristics of the community, and those of the businesses to which they were assigned. The cases prepared by the students for their respective businesses were of such quality that the case studies won both the district and regional awards in the SBA's annual SBI case competition in each of the ten years of the program's operation. These included awards from both the Exxon and the Freedom Foundation.