Students in Free Enterprise, SIFE, is a business club on campus that helps promote free enterprise and spread knowledge of business to the community.
SIFE is an international club that can be found on more than 1,200 campuses in more than thirty-one countries around the world, such as Australia, Brazil, China and South Africa.
SIFE hopes to offer students at Quinnipiac the chance to experience involvement in business on a more personal level than what can be attained by merely attending lectures.
The organization’s goals are to help spread knowledge through community involvement. Therefore, SIFE is affording the student an opportunity to interact in different business environments while simultaneously bringing business knowledge to the community. SIFE hopes to offer students exposure to entrepreneur-ship, and one-on-one training with business executives on a more personal level.
Every April, SIFE holds a regional competition in Hartford, CT. The winner then has the opportunity to go to Kansas and participate in the national competition. After this competition, SIFE holds a career fair in which resumes may be submitted. Businesses look upon SIFE students favorably because these students already have some experience and have the drive and ambition the business world needs.
One of the goals of SIFE is to allowing students to run community projects, which allows them to apply what they have learned in class and relate it to the real world. Each project has a manager to head the project, which allows the students to attain managerial skills early in life.
“Being a SIFE project manager awards [the students] with an opportunity to learn and develop these skills,” said Bryan Perloth, president of SIFE.
SIFE at Quinnipiac University aspires to promote the ideal of the “American Dream,” supporting this ideal and preserving it for future generations.
The club focuses on spreading the spirit of free enterprise to its members as well as to the community.
In the past, SIFE has been involved in a myriad of projects designed to help the local community. SIFE community involvement efforts have included public school outreach programs, textbook drives to help profit African universities, business discussions with local entrepreneurs and presentations to the Quinnipiac community on the use of credit cards.
In the future, SIFE plans to sponsor a high school stock market game, create a web site to aid the local business community gain a helpful and valuable resource, develop and maintain an alumni association and to develop mutual projects with other organizations and businesses.
SIFE is currently running a Business Ethics project and is setting up a women’s entrepreneur panel on Nov. 17 at 6:30 p.m.
“Our main goal or mission is to spread a practical knowledge of our domestic and global economic system(s) and do so by running out-reach projects,” said Perloth.
Emily Limoges, a current freshman business major attending Quinnipiac University, has recently joined the SIFE club.
“SIFE looks like a great club to join here [at Quinnipiac],” she said. “I’ve attended a few meetings and joined one of SIFE’s programs called Entre Prep. This program involves mentoring local high school students to teach them about the business world. It’s going to be cool.”
Limoges looks forward to her future involvement in this organization.
SIFE is open to students of all majors. Meetings are usually held every other Monday in the Student Center, but announcements are made accordingly if there are any changes.
For more information, call x8352 or e-mail Bryan.Belanger @quinnipiac.edu or [email protected]