President Ribeau, William Dallas and Scott Hamilton (left to right) show off the check representing the donation that will establish a BGSU center for entrepreneurial leadership.

Passion for enterprise shared with students
Hamilton, Dallas give $3 million to BGSU entrepreneurship center

Two friends with Bowling Green roots are sharing their entrepreneurial passion with BGSU undergraduates to help them develop their own entrepreneurial spirit.

Scott Hamilton, an Olympic gold-medal skater and Bowling Green native, and William Dallas, a BGSU alumnus and successful California businessman, presented a joint, $3 million gift to the College of Business Administration on April 29.

Their gift will fund the creation of the William and Beverly Dallas and Scott and Tracie Hamilton Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership.

In making the gift, Hamilton said that entrepreneurship is a chance to give back. “To build something and watch it grow and outlive you is a great gift,” he said. “To help students take the next step in their lives is one of the greatest thrills of my life.”

He added that he made the gift in honor of Helen McLoraine, the benefactor who supported him throughout his amateur career, and his adoptive parents, Ernest and Dorothy Hamilton, BGSU faculty members who are now deceased. Part of the gift will establish the Ernest and Dorothy Hamilton Professorship.

An elated Dallas said that theoretically, he and Hamilton should not be joining together to do this as they had not known one another in Bowling Green. But when they ended up as neighbors in California and both shared “a passion for helping people figure out what it is they want to do,” as well as a connection to BGSU—“it’s not possible, but it’s happening.”

The gift presentation culminated “Turning Passion into Enterprise: A Seminar for Entrepreneurs,” the first event in the Bob and Karen Sebo Lecture Series. Keynote speaker for the day was B. Thomas Golisano, the 2004 International Philanthropist of the Year. Golisano, founder of Paychex, Inc., is also the owner of the Buffalo Sabres, a National Hockey League team.

More than 500 people were present for the daylong event, which included panel discussions with local entrepreneurs and BGSU faculty. (For more on Hamilton's speech at the seminar, see the May issue of Monitor Monthly.)

The Dallas and Hamilton Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership will ultimately include University academic programs, community entrepreneurial leadership programs and education outreach programs to the general community. The center will sponsor forums on entrepreneurship, serve as the incubator for new ideas and be a site for internships, said Brent Nicholson, director of entrepreneurship programs in the College of Business Administration.

Since the inception of the undergraduate minor in fall 2003, the entrepreneurship program has grown quickly and will graduate its first six students next week. The four classes currently offered have closed out at 44 students each, said college Dean Robert Edmister, adding that the center will be a valuable recruiting tool for BGSU.

Developing students’ ability to see new opportunities, assess risks, make decisions and take action is a goal of the entrepreneurship training, Edmister said. These skills are applicable not only to new enterprises but to existing businesses as well, he added.

The expansion of the program to include an undergraduate minor was made possible by a $50,000 award from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo., in 2003. The entrepreneurship minor is not reserved for business students but open to all majors.

The program had already received more than $800,000 in support from alumni this year, with gifts from Patrick and Debra Ryan, both 1974 BGSU graduates, and Ron Whitehouse, a 1967 alumnus, and his wife, Sue, who attended BGSU.

In discussing the goals of the program, Nicholson told the audience, “We seek to make undergraduates discontented and dissatisfied with the status quo.” The program will foster “discontent with the notion of boundaries on what can be accomplished,” he added, and encourage “a mindset that rejects the passive voice” in favor of a more proactive way of dealing with the world. The entrepreneur is one who embraces change, and change creates opportunities that must be seized, sometimes at the risk of loss, he said.

Rick Acker, one of the first students to be graduating with the entrepreneurship minor, said that the program “gave me both the knowledge to make my ideas tangible and the confidence to do so.”

Hamilton, who enrolled in classes at BGSU in 1976, was named an honorary alumnus in 1985 and received an honorary doctor of performing arts degree in 1994. He learned to skate at the BGSU Ice Arena, won a berth on the U.S. Olympic squad in 1980 and was voted Male Athlete of the Year by the Olympic Committee in 1981. Hamilton captured the gold medal at the 1984 Winter Olympic Games
in Sarajevo.

After graduating from the amateur ranks in 1984, he toured for 15 seasons with Stars on Ice—which he co-created and co-produced—and has independently produced ice shows and covered the Winter Olympics as a commentator for CBS Sports. He also received an Emmy Award for a television special and won praise for his biography, Landing It.

Hamilton now tours the country as a motivational speaker, discussing his battle overcoming cancer and his career on the ice. He is also involved in numerous charitable endeavors across the country.

A 1977 magna cum laude graduate of BGSU, Dallas began to make a name for himself as an entrepreneur almost as soon as he graduated. He co-founded and served as chairman and CEO of First Franklin Financial Corp. and co-founded Heritage Bank of Commerce, both in California. Today, Dallas is chairman and CEO of Ownit Mortgage Solutions, an industry leader in nonagency residential lending specializing in 100 percent purchase programs. He holds the coveted Certified Mortgage Banker designation.

The entrepreneur earned a juris doctorate from the University of Santa Clara in 1987. In 2002, Dallas received a BGSU Accomplished Graduate Award. He recently retired as chairman of California Lutheran University.

In 2001, Dallas and his partner, Bill Freeman, co-founded B&B Restaurant Ventures with Fox Sports. The New York-based television network launched Fox Sports Grill in Scottsdale, Ariz., with a nationwide rollout planned for later this year and into 2005.

Scott Hamilton expresses his pride in being able to give back to his hometown.