Students Isaac Duop ’25 of Louisville, Kentucky, and Cash Stephens ’26 of Russell Springs, Kentucky, earn statewide award for their business plans.
COLUMBIA, KY. (05/09/2025) The next generation of Fortune 500 leaders might have emerged from a classroom this spring in Lindsey Wilson College’s Goodhue Classroom Building.
Students in the “Entrepreneurship Project” class, taught by business faculty member Linda Grider, spent the semester creating and implementing plans to start their own business. And two of them were recognized on the state level for their work.
Students Isaac Duop ’25 of Louisville, Kentucky, and Cash Stephens ’26 of Russell Springs, Kentucky, were two of five winners in the highly competitive University of Kentucky Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship Bootcamp 1.0. The semester-long program that assesses business concepts includes plans submitted by undergraduate and graduate students from throughout the United States.
“The fact that they were able to go up against not only students from all over the country but against some students who are also in graduate school speaks volumes of the quality of the thought, work and effort put into their plans,” said Grider.
In addition to pitching their business plans in the entrepreneurship bootcamp and at the Lindsey Wilson Entrepreneurship Expo held in the spring, the “Entrepreneurship Project” students also refined pitches in front of their classmates.
A business administration major with an emphasis in entrepreneurial management, Duop’s plan called for using his company, Alaar Enterprises, to help build hospitals and schools in his native South Sudan with money generated from betting on sports and other forms of entertainment.
When Duop made his business pitch to fellow classmates in a meeting in Goodhue Classroom Building, he said that building more hospitals and schools in South Sudan will help create more jobs through the construction projects and then increase the standard of living by services offered in the buildings.
“You look around in South Sudan and the only thing you see is despair,” he said. “This is how we fight poverty and give people a chance to live better lives.”
Stephens pitched his business, Russell Creek Farms, as a cattle farm “where we blend tradition with innovation.” Stephens’ company feeds distillers grain, a nutrition-rich cereal byproduct of the distillation process, to undernourished cattle. When Stephens made his pitch to his classmates, he was using the process to feed 11 head of cattle on his Russell County farm, with plans to expand it to 15 cattle.
Connecting the classroom to the real world
Grider said that combining the class with the entrepreneurship bootcamp and tapping into one of six of Kentucky state government’s Innovation Hubs, gave the Lindsey Wilson students a powerful learning formula that blended textbook knowledge with real-life experiences.
“Our students are not only getting the benefits of the education they are receiving in the classroom, but they are also interacting with other entrepreneurs from all over,” she said.
Several of the other students’ projects aimed to serve a consumer need, such as providing high-quality, low-cost clothing, sports equipment or athletic shoes. But one focused on leveraging Kentnucky’s burgeoning tourism industry, both among out-of-state visitors and among state residents.
Taylor Harvey ’25 of Columbia proposed Kentucky Heritage Tours, which provides tourists with “hassle-free, all-inclusive guided tours that introduce visitors to the very best Kentucky has to offer.”
“This combines personalized service and Southern hospitality while showing visitors the hidden gems that make up Kentucky’s unique landmarks, nature and culture,” she said.
Grider said the diversity of her students’ business plans showed how the class encouraged and nurtured students’ innovation.
“It’s a lot of fun to work with them to see their creativity and problem-solving,” she said. “We want our students to understand how complicated and challenging it is to be an entrepreneur because it really is a 24/7 profession. But we also want to give them the knowledge and tools to be successful because we want to help produce tomorrow’s entrepreneurs right here at Lindsey Wilson.”
Students in Linda Grider’s “Entrepreneurship Project” spent the spring semester creating and implementing plans to start their own business, and two of them won awards in the highly competitive University of Kentucky Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship Bootcamp 1.0. From left: Cash Stephens ’26 of Russell Springs, Kentucky; Larry Montgomery III ’27 of Louisville, Kentucky; Grider; Troy Churchill ’26 of Louisville; Taylor Harvey ’25 of Columbia; Caleb Marsh ’26 of Shelbyville, Tennessee; and Isaac Duop ’25 of Louisville.
Lindsey Wilson College is a vibrant liberal arts college in Columbia, Kentucky. Founded in 1903 and affiliated with The United Methodist Church, the mission of Lindsey Wilson is to serve the educational needs of students by providing a living-learning environment within an atmosphere of active caring and Christian concern where every student, every day, learns and grows and feels like a real human being. Lindsey Wilson — which will become Lindsey Wilson University on July 1 — has an enrollment of more than 4,000 students, and the college offers 28 undergraduate majors, five graduate programs and a doctoral program. The college’s 28 intercollegiate varsity athletic teams have won more than 120 team and individual national championships.
(Duane Bonifer – Lindsey Wilson College)