This story originally was published by KRMG. Click here to read the original story.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the featured speaker at The Oklahoma State University business forum in Tulsa on Thursday.

She says restricting free trade is one of the biggest external threats to our economy.  "I worry about rising nationalism and protectionism as a problem for the global economy" but thinks the biggest danger from outside would be another terrorist attack like those that hit us on September 11th.  

Rice seems most worried about what we are doing internally but thinks we'll continue to be a world leader as long as we get our fiscal house in order and keep doing the things we've done over the past six decades.

This story originally was published by Orange Connection. Click here to read the original story.

Former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice spoke yesterday and today in Oklahoma City and Tulsa as part of the Spears School of Business speakers series. She will round out her OSU tour today at 3:30 p.m. inside Gallagher-Iba Arena as part of the Global Briefing Series.

Tickets are still available and can be purchased online at sois.okstate.edu. Video of a press conference held before yesterday's speech in Oklahoma City can be viewed below from NewsOK.com.

Rice served as the 66th U.S. Secretary of State from January 2005 to 2009. Before serving as America’s chief diplomat, she served as assistant to the President for national security affairs (national security advisor) from January 2001-2005. Rice served as a member of the board of directors for the Chevron, Charles Schwab, and Transamerica corporations. She is currently the Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution.

This story originally was published by EnidNews.com. Click here to read the original story.

Andy Lee Ingraham, a junior at Oklahoma State University, has received the ConocoPhillips Spirit Scholarship for the 2009-2010 academic year.

Ingraham is a 2007 graduate of Enid High School and currently is pursuing a degree in management information systems. He is a member of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity and is on the Dean’s honor roll.

He is the son of Bruce and Jane Ingraham of Enid and the grandson of Lee and Nancy Ingraham and Mary Allen, all of Enid, and the late J.D.

This story originally was published by the O'Colly. Click here to read the original story.

The Spears School of Business hosted the first Veterans with Disabilities Entrepreneurship Program at OSU this past week.

There were about 30 veterans from all over the country who attended the program’s workshops and were given rooms at the Atherton Hotel during their stay.

“This is a program to empower veterans to not only make the transition from military service to civilian life but also to give them a path,” said Michael Morris, head of the entrepreneurship department at OSU. Entrepreneurship is an incredibly empowering way for veterans to create their own companies, their own jobs and ultimately their own wealth, said Morris.

This story originally was published by the O'Colly. Click here to read the original story.

Condoleezza Rice is stepping onto the Oklahoma State University campus Thursday to broaden students’ minds about politics and foreign affairs.

Rice is speaking from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Thursday at Gallagher-Iba Arena. Tickets are free to OSU students, faculty and staff or $15 for general admission. The tickets are available at the Hub in the Student Union or at www.rice.okstate.edu.

Rice served under President George W. Bush as Security of State from 2005 to 2008. According to the U.S. Department of State Web site,
www.state.gov/secretary, Rice has a doctorate in political science and was a professor of political science for Stanford University throughout the late 1980s and 1990s.

By Ruth Inman, Spears School communications specialist

A new study by researchers at the Oklahoma State University Center for Applied Economic Research shows that the economic performance of Texas and Oklahoma are linked via undeniable trade flows, and growth in one state results in growth in the other state.

The study was conducted by Kyle Dean and Russell Evans, CAER associate director and director, respectively. Dean and Evans constructed a multi-regional input-output model to estimate the level of economic interdependency that exists between Oklahoma and Texas along the I-35 Corridor from Oklahoma City to Dallas/Fort Worth.

The model allowed Dean and Evans to estimate the level of inter-regional dependency by observing the impact that 1 percent Texas region growth has on the Oklahoma region, and vice versa.

U.S. Air Force veteran Christopher Stanford (sitting) of Austin, Texas gets assistance from professor Justin Webb.

Stanford is among 31 veterans from across the country who have been participating this week on the OSU-Stillwater campus in the Veterans with Disabilities Entrepreneurship Program (VEP) through the OSU Spears School of Business Department of Entrepreneurship.  Designed like a military bootcamp, the program consists of a series of training modules which assist the veterans in creating and growing profitable businesses that can profitable. 

The program is free and gives participants a chance to receive guidance from experienced OSU faculty and successful entrepreneurs in addition to receiving 24 continuing education credits.

Students from Oklahoma State University-Tulsa’s Creative Marketing course are using social media to rally support in an online creativity tournament and creating videos for a second competition whose winners will be featured at a Tulsa Drillers game during opening weekend at ONEOK Field.

Dr. Tracy Suter, associate professor of marketing in OSU’s Spears School of Business, challenged his students to co-create, explore and interpret the creative experience. The short-term course will conclude with the second annual TAS-sel College Tournament and a viral video production project that will be showcased in the OSU-Tulsa Auditorium on Feb. 11 at 6 p.m.

“So often we ask students to study theories, learn facts and perform scholastic tasks. I do not want to diminish the importance of these activities, but I recognize there is rarely any room for their own creative ideas. My goal was to bring creativity back,” Suter said.

Maxine Clark, Build-A-Bear Workshop  founder, chairman and “chief executive bear” will serve as a keynote speaker for the first annual Women Entrepreneurs Inspire Conference in Oklahoma City at the Cox Convention Center on March 30, 2010. Clark will share her entrepreneurial story behind the creation of Build-A-Bear Workshop and its success and inspire participants to live in a world of possibilities and always dream big.

The one-day WE Inspire conference will offer opportunities for women entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs to get inspired by successful women entrepreneurs from across the country, learn tools to help start and grow a business, discover ways to do business better and network with other women entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs. The event will be presented by the Riata Center for Entrepreneurship in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University.

“Our goal is to support women entrepreneurs in starting or growing businesses through role models, success stories, workshops by entrepreneurs and expertise from our entrepreneurship faculty,” said Nola Miyasaki, Riata Center executive director. “The WE Inspire conference is designed to help women find ways to do business better and to be successful in their entrepreneurial endeavors.”

Computer games have a broad appeal that transcends gender, culture, age and socio-economic status. New research from Oklahoma State University published in the International Journal of Social and Humanistic Computing suggests creating computer games, rather than just playing them, could boost students’ critical and creative thinking skills, as well as broaden their participation in computing.

Principle investigator Nik Dalal, along with Parth Dalal, Subhash Kak, Pavlo Antonenko, and Susan Stansberry outline a case for using rapid computer game creation as an innovative teaching method that could ultimately help bridge the digital divide between those people lacking computer skills and access and those with them.

“We are looking at how this concept can be used to impart crucial thinking skills in an educational curriculum,” said Dalal, who also is a professor of management science and information systems at OSU. “We also are investigating how this concept can create a social and humanistic effect to help us bridge the digital divide.”