Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship education seeks to prepare people, especially youth, to be responsible, enterprising individuals who become entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial thinkers and contribute to economic development and sustainable communities. The CEO program is much more than a textbook course. Rather, students are immersed in real life learning experiences with the opportunity to take risks, manage the results, and learn from the outcomes.

The First CEO (Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities) class, began in Effingham in the fall of 2007. The Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship was established in 2010 by Midland States Bank for the purpose of bringing the CEO program to interested communities, helping them to create networks of business people connecting to students. Thus far the Institute has taken the CEO program to communities in four states; Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Missouri with the 13 classes currently operating, growing to 29 this coming fall.

The mission of the Midland Institute for Entrepreneurship states: “we believe that entrepreneurship is much more about a mindset than it is a body of business knowledge, much more about a new way to view the world than a collection of business concepts.”


The tools that the institute uses to accomplish its purpose and mission include; guiding Communities through the process of establishing the network of business and community leaders needed to begin a CEO Class. Once the program is established the institute provides ongoing training, materials, curriculum content, resources, facilitators mentoring, and support for the local CEO boards. Many of the materials and operating documents are available through password protected areas of the website.

We are continually looking for new ways to strengthen and support our CEO communities. The CEO Connect network is the next step in that development and with your help we can expand the network of human resources in each CEO Community by connecting them to all of the current and future CEO Communities. Together with the help of the Mary Heath Foundation we can make this next step now.