CEI receiving $709,000 national grant

Grant will help fund Central California Emerging Technology Accelerator

By California State University, Bakersfield

September 6^th, 2022

California State University, Bakersfield is receiving a $709,000 grant to support its new Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

CSUB is one out of 26 colleges and universities nationwide to be selected for a U.S. Economic Development Administration University Center grant. This grant will be distributed over a period of five years, providing $141,800 annually.

The grant will fund a project titled the Central California Emerging Technology Accelerator (CCETA), which will be housed within the CEI Accelerator Program.

“Now that we have this grant, our accelerator can be at the forefront for driving innovation on our campus and in the community," said CEI Executive Director Dr. Seung Bach. "The grant will provide more resources for regional economic development, drive the creation of scalable technology driven ventures and boost the innovation capacity of Kern County. This is a huge stepping stone, an excellent opportunity for the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in Kern County.”

According to Dr. Jeremy Woods — associate professor of management for the School of Business and Public Administration and faculty director of the center — the CCETA will have five primary program goals:

Open a robust local business accelerator network.
Open an emerging technology lab to build a Research & Development (R&D) bridge between industry partners from our local aerospace, energy, and agriculture sectors and entrepreneurs participating in CEI accelerator.
Implement multiple R&D workforce development partnerships with our burgeoning East Kern aerospace sector which feeds into our emerging technology lab.
Conduct outreach to expand the R&D workforce development.
Increase rural entrepreneurship representation.

This will be the second EDA University Center to be established in California. the first was the Center for Economic Development at CSU Chico. Partners of the CCETA include the Air Force Research Laboratory Rocket Propulsion Directorate, the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake, CSUB’s School of Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering, CSUB’s Small Business Development Center, the Kern Economic Development Corporation, the Kern Initiative for Talent + Entrepreneurship, Mech Cowork, and Bitwise.

Sub-contractor partners include the Water, Energy and Technology Center at California State University, Fresno, and the Kern Community College District.

“The CEI Accelerator Program (with the additional support from the EDA grant for the University Center) will greatly facilitate our students coming out of our entrepreneurship program to convert their ideas into real-world businesses in the region," said Dr. Sumita Sarma, assistant professor of management and CEI clinical faculty fellow. "Our entrepreneurship courses promote a realistic and active learning approach wherein students identify a problem or opportunity worth solving and find a solution worth building to make an impact.”

Within the next five years, CCETA plans to become a major player in commercializing technology, enhancing ecosystem partnerships and providing an effective innovation hub, which delivers synergistic impacts for the Bakersfield, Kern County and Central California entrepreneurial communities.

“The CCETA has been a project several years in the making, and we’re delighted to now have the resources to get our engineering students more involved with opportunities in our local aerospace sector and our entrepreneurship students leveraging the global-leading aerospace, energy, and agricultural technologies that drive our region," said Dr. Woods.

For additional information, contact Dr. Woods at 661-654-3961 or jwoods7@csub.edu. To learn more about the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, visit csub.edu/cei.