NIACC Pappajohn Center Partners with Iowa Colleges to Form Great Plains Entrepreneurial Consortium to Help Entrepreneurship Flourish in Iowa
Paula Kueter doesn’t just want students to stay in Iowa after college. She wants them to have the network and support to start businesses here. That’s the idea behind the Great Plains Entrepreneurial Consortium, a group of small private colleges and one community college that aims to develop a statewide network that encourages entrepreneurship to flourish in Iowa’s rural areas.
“The idea is, by having this consortium, the commitment to the consortium and its activities will, in turn, build more resilient and connected, vibrant local entrepreneurial communities across Iowa,” said Kueter, who was recently named director of Morningside University’s newly established Larry & Joan Arnold Center for Entrepreneurship and Economic Development.
The consortium was conceptualized in 2023 when entrepreneurial leaders at four Iowa colleges — Morningside University, Dordt University, Buena Vista University and Drake University — got together to discuss how they could collaborate to provide support, networking, education and events similar to those found at Iowa’s Regent universities. They then invited the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at North Iowa Area Community College to join as well.
“We’re leveraging our ruralness, per se, away from Ames and Iowa City and giving students that same opportunity and then having a big conference in early spring,” Kueter said. “So the consortium is really about student networking and sharing resources.”
The consortium was funded with part of a $360,650 grant that Morningside University received from the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Entrepreneurial Investment Award program. Kueter said the amount awarded was a record for the EIA program, which usually awards up to $200,000 in funding to resource providers supporting entrepreneurs and startups.
The consortium’s first pilot event, the Iowa Student Entrepreneurship Summit, was held at Drake in 2024. During that event, organizers hosted speakers, a pitch competition and a design challenge. Students from Dordt, Buena Vista, Central College and Drake participated.
This spring, Candi Karsjens, director of the NIACC John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, hosted the second annual summit at NIACC. Select students from this year’s pitch competition went on to compete in the statewide Pappajohn Student Entrepreneurial Venture Competition, Kueter said. The goal of the events and other future offerings is to enhance the entrepreneurial ecosystems in non-urban regions and foster a culture that leads to entrepreneurial success.
Caleb Renner, owner and founder of Renner Ag Solutions, which is developing a solution to clean up grain bins, recently graduated from NIACC. He’s also a full-time farmer in Klemme. While he was developing his business, he participated in numerous pitch competitions, including both pilots put on by the consortium.
“I’ve won over $15,000 in prize money from pitch competitions, and that really has made a difference between being able to pursue this venture and to not pursue this venture,” Renner said. “But it’s more than just the money, of course, it’s also the connections. A lot of what the consortium preaches is that you need to be good at networking. And this is a team effort, not just you, and you need to know a lot of really intelligent, smart people.”
Karsjens said the consortium is important because rural Iowa students have less exposure to entrepreneurship. “Smaller schools need to pool all their resources, people, money, expertise, skills and mentoring to be able to continue to grow entrepreneurship outside of the urban areas,” she said.
Small business continues to be a key driver in growth for rural areas as Main Street businesses age, she said. “Small business growth is the catalyst that really keeps economic development happening in the smaller rural areas,” she said. “We focus so much, when you think about startups, on the unicorn, the tech startup, the scalable growth company that’s going to be a multi-million dollar company, but we still need Main Street retail, and we still need Main Street and lifestyle businesses in the small communities.”
She said by bringing in students from different types of colleges in Iowa, it can help rural areas stay relevant and “hopefully inject some vitality and younger people into the areas as well.”
David Bernstein, president of State Steel, said he hopes to be involved in supporting the consortium’s work. His company is a steel provider for the Upper Midwest and is based in Sioux City, which is also home to Morningside University. “I’ve always had concerns, being in manufacturing in western Iowa … there doesn’t seem to be any awareness [of] manufacturing in western Iowa, and manufacturing is such a critical part of Iowa’s economy,” he said. “And there’s great programs to help young folks and all folks for that matter, but I think any kind of initiative helps to just convey the opportunities for startups … to be able to start and grow in Iowa and western Iowa.”
As the consortium becomes more established, another layer is engaging with industry partners and economic development corporations with the goal of creating additional support for entrepreneurs in various regions and helping serve businesses’ talent needs.
Bernstein said students in the consortium will realize that the barriers are low when it comes to starting a new business in a place like Sioux City. “The city will help you,” he said. “So you can say, ‘I want to start this business, whether I want to work a new job and start a thing at night as a side hustle, or start something on the side as a side hustle,’ or just go off on your own. The barriers to entry are very low in a place like Sioux City.”
Kueter said she plans to schedule a student entrepreneurship summit in spring 2026 that will include a pitch competition, a conference and design opportunities. She also plans to have virtual pitches in the fall. She has ideas for sharing resources between the colleges in the consortium, too. For example, making guest speakers accessible for all on Zoom. Her hope is through the activities of the consortium, students across Iowa will start creating networks and communities of their own.
“Wouldn’t it be great if the Drake students knew about the Siouxland students and the Siouxland students knew about Mason City?” she said. “It brings together an opportunity to equip students with these connections. So when they’re leaving college, they are already on the ground running.”
Source: Des Moines Business Record
