Miami University celebrated the official opening of its incubator center College@Elm last week, a debut spurred in part by a major donation from a pair of longtime donors whose names will grace the facility.
College@Elm, housed in a 39,000-square-foot, once-vacant building at 20 S. Elm St. in Oxford, located west of campus, will be formally known as the Lee and Rosemary Fisher Innovation College@Elm, following an undisclosed but “significant financial commitment” from the couple.
In total Miami raised nearly $16.4 million for the center.
It received major donations from the Richard and Emily Smucker Family Foundation and Christine B. Taylor Enterprise Holdings and funding from the Butler County Board of Commissioners, JobsOhio, the state of Ohio and the city of Oxford, among other private donors.
The facility includes an entrepreneurial training center, office and collaboration spaces, design and testing areas and manufacturing operations and is anchored by tenants the Fischer Group, a Butler County-based manufacturing firm; the city of Oxford; the Ohio Small Business Development Center; and 1809 Capital, a venture fund launched last year by a "who’s who" of Miami alum. The firm targets growth-stage startups led by university alumni or co-invests alongside venture funds with Miami alumni on their management team.
College@Elm has been years in the making. Miami and city of Oxford officials have billed it as a catalytic project for the city, university and local entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Business Courier highlighted their efforts in a January 2021 weekly cover story.
The center today, the university said, is a modern, vibrant facility for incubating and accelerating entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses. It offers the training and workforce education to produce Ohio’s future manufacturing and high-tech workforce and serves as a model to other rural communities.
The longer-term goal is to convert a three-block undeveloped area in the city's business district into a high-tech innovation and creativity corridor.
“The incubator leverages Miami's entrepreneurship, business and engineering expertise to build Butler County as an epicenter of inclusive innovation,” said Randi Thomas, vice president of Aspire at Miami, an office that works to advocate the university to businesses, government and community members.
“College@Elm will be the lighthouse, the beacon for community members," he said.
The Fishers are longtime university supporters and Miami University alumni. Lee Fisher served as a personal financial analyst for Citigroup prior to his retirement, while Rosemary Fisher was a teacher.
Per the school, the couple previously committed $100,000 to establish the Fisher-Holoviak Music Professorship as well as the Lee and Rosemary Fisher Scholarship and have included the Miami University Foundation in their estate plans for a minimum of $1 million.
Miami is second-largest Dayton-area school with more than 23,000 students.
