Winter 2001
Volume 3, Number 2
  


New outreach office serves entrepreneurs
and small businesses in Mifflin County

By Dana Bauer


Donna Holmes is director of the Penn State Small Business Development Center, which has opened a center in Mifflin County to serve the needs of entrepreneurs and prospective business owners in the Juniata Valley.
The Penn State Small Business Development Center (SBDC) has opened a new outreach office in Penn State’s Center for Outreach and Cooperative Extension serving Juniata Valley in Lewistown, Pa.

“We feel there are certainly enough small businesses in Mifflin County to support an outreach office of the Penn State SBDC,” Michael Ryan, business analyst for the new outreach center, said. “We will be providing the same services as the SBDC at University Park.”

The center provides free seminars on the “nuts and bolts” of starting a business — everything from developing a business plan to learning how to market a product or service. Also, the center offers free one-on-one consulting for small firms and business start ups, enabling them to compete and grow in today’s highly competitive global economy.

The Penn State Small Business Development Center at University Park opened in October 1997 in response to the needs of small and prospective business owners in Centre and Mifflin counties. Penn State SBDC’s Outreach Center in Lewistown opened in June to better meet the needs of small firms and entrepreneurs in Mifflin County.

“We wanted an SBDC in a convenient location for them,” Donna Holmes, director of the Penn State SBDC, said. “Having a person located in the community we feel will encourage more Mifflin County businesses to use the services of the SBDC.”

Ryan, who is based in Lewistown, plans to work closely with the Penn State SBDC staff located in the Innovation Park Technology Center on the University Park campus. He is a native of Mifflin County, with a degree in accounting from Penn State. Before joining the SBDC, he worked in small business, most recently at Kish Bank.

The Penn State SBDC is one of 16 in Pennsylvania and part of a nationwide network of more than 1,000 centers that offer free assistance to entrepreneurs of small and emerging businesses.

The Penn State Small Business Development Center in Mifflin County can be reached by phone at (717) 247-1280; by e-mail at sbdc@psu.edu; and on the Web at
http://www.research.psu.edu/sbdc/ and http://www.pasbdc.org/.

  

U.Ed.OCE 01-8002/mkm/GSM