college of Business and Public Administration
Karen Dill Bowerman, dean

Spring/Summer 2005

It’s All About Community

If you’re looking for someone who embodies that old-fashioned belief in taking care of your community, look no further than Candace Hunter Wiest. President and chief operating officer of Inland Empire National Bank in Riverside, she is California State University, San Bernardino’s 2005 Arrowhead Distinguished Executive Officer. The award recognizes leadership, civic service and commitment to education.

“Honoring Candace Wiest with the Arrowhead Award is endorsement of her belief that community commitment is a cornerstone of community banking,” said Karen Dill Bowerman, dean of the College of Business and Public Administration. Attendance at the luncheon banquet generates the funding for an endowed scholarship in Wiest’s name for students in the business college. “An endowment means that students will receive this scholarship in perpetuity,” Bowerman said.

Wiest serves on the advisory council for the Inland Empire Women’s Business Center and the Family Business Partnership, which are programs of CSUSB’s Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship. Appointed president of Inland Empire National Bank in 1993, Wiest has been with the bank since 1988, having previously served as a lender, branch manager and the bank’s credit administrator. She is a true rags-to-riches story, working as a single-mother and waitress to support her three children before beginning her banking career as a teller and working her way to the top. She has been a community banker for more than 20 years, specializing in construction, lending and special assets.

With two branches in Riverside and one in Fallbrook, Inland Empire National Bank has approximately $107 million in assets. Under her leadership, the bank has moved to the top 4 percent of its national peer group in profitability and was recognized by Bauer Financial Inc. as one of the best banks in the country. In 2003, Wiest was elected a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She is the first woman to be elected a Class A Director I in the bank’s 90-year history.

Wiest is an active contributor to the community, serving as the immediate past chair of the board of the Greater Riverside Chamber of Commerce and immediate past chair of the Raincross Club. She is a member of the A. Gary Anderson School of Management advisory board, the YWCA Professional Women’s Council, California Baptist University board of visitors, La Sierra University Foundation trustees and a past trustee of the University of California Riverside Foundation.

The National Republican Congressional Committee honored her with the Businessman of the Year Award for California in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Wiest is the 14th executive honored by Cal State’s business college.

Gold sponsors for the luncheon honoring Wiest were Arrowhead Credit Union and Inland Empire National Bank. Silver sponsors were Nevada State Bank, WW Painting & Construction Solutions, Citizens Business Bank, and Bruce Varner, Saleson & Brandt LLP.

Taking Entrepreneurship Up a Notch

What you do well gets noticed sometimes, and Entrepreneur Magazine has been noticing Cal State San Bernardino’s entrepreneurship program. Named one of the best 100 collegiate entrepreneurship programs in the United States in the publication’s April 2005 issue, the program was listed among the top 75 programs nationally and in the top 26 regionally.

The university’s academic entrepreneurship program, spearheaded by the Inland Empire Center for Entrepreneurship (IECE) climbed into the second tier, which means it ranked somewhere between 14th and 26th or among the top 10 percent of entrepreneurship programs in the country. CSUSB also ranked higher than in the magazine’s ranking last year, when it was listed in the third tier of entrepreneurial programs.

IECE director Mike Stull said, “We’re very pleased to be recognized among the best in the nation in teaching and supporting entrepreneurship both on campus and in the local community.”

Creating and sustaining a leading entrepreneurship program at the university has been IECE’s goal since the program was established in the late 1990s. Stull took over as director of the program in 2002, and with the addition of more resources and staff, he said, “things have really taken off.”

Along with both undergraduate and M.B.A. degree concentrations in entrepreneurship, IECE also conducts an annual student business plan competition; provides students with internships and student consulting projects with local entrepreneurial companies; offers a series of lectures each year that bring successful entrepreneurs to campus to speak with students interested in launching entrepreneurial ventures; and has established the Spirit of the Entrepreneur scholarship fund that provides up to four full-tuition scholarships annually to students studying entrepreneurship.

Last year IECE launched the Women’s Business Center, the Family Business Partnership, the Small Farms Initiative and the Minority Resource Center. A recent study conducted at the Univer-sity of Arizona showed that entrepreneurship students start more companies, and they are also more successful.

Quick Takes

The final conference in a series of three meetings on “Goods Movement In and Through the Inland Empire” will be held June 3 at the Radisson Hotel San Bernardino Convention Center. Organized by the College of Business and Public Administration, the conference covers what impact new and existing industries — coupled with a hot housing market — has on goods movement and the quality of life. The session will bring together experts from various areas of transportation. For more information call the college development office at (909) 880-7295.