Student Rian Jacobs and CEV Director Nathan Preheim

Creighton’s new Center for Enterprise Value (CEV), led by Nathan Preheim, is taking shape as a hub for innovation, entrepreneurship and applied learning.   

Already underway with initiatives including a campus-wide Entrepreneurship Minor, CEV will expand throughout 2025–26 with Innovation Challenges, Founder Fridays and a new “Flight School” experience.   

Students like sophomore Rian Jacobs are already benefiting. Jacobs launched BioBobbers, a sustainable fishing product, with mentorship from Preheim and support from the Entrepreneurship Club and University Libraries Makerspace.   

Alumni are engaging too, with opportunities to join Founder Fridays in the future. Stay tuned for more ways to get involved! 

Creighton students are making game-changing plays behind the scenes at the College World Series. 

The student-led Baseball Analytics Team (CBAT) helps the NCAA track live data, deliver stats and enhance gameplay at the CWS. “I’m extremely lucky to go to a school where I can take my classroom knowledge and apply it to college baseball’s biggest stage,” says junior accounting major Patrick Totzke.   

Founded by alum Ryan Wolak, BSBA’21, CBAT offers hands-on experience in sports analytics, preparing students for big-league careers behind the scenes. 

Paul Markwardt, BSBA’83, JD’86, built a nationally recognized legal career on values first learned in rural Iowa and deepened at Creighton. Now a top tax and real estate attorney in Minnesota, he’s also a champion of community and sustainability. He received Creighton’s Alumni Merit Award, which honors graduates for professional excellence and for living as “women and men for and with others.”   

He says that Creighton “shaped my understanding that who we are—the values we hold, the responsibilities we carry and the way we live in our community—is as important as what we know.”   

Creighton’s Heider College of Business is advancing the Economy of Communion (EoC), a values-based approach to business that promotes human dignity through meaningful work.   

With support from a $1.2M grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Andrew Gustafson, PhD, is developing resources to equip educators, students and entrepreneurs to put EoC principles into practice. These resources include books, articles and curriculum offered by the Business, Faith and the Common Good Institute, and will guide practitioners in their efforts to use business to serve the materially poor while making a profit.   

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Heider alums Mike App, BSBA’88, Mike Toohey, MBA’91, and TJ Twit, BSBA’99, have pooled their love of music with their business acumen to enrich Omaha’s music scene with the Maha Music Festival. Established in 2009 as a gift to the Omaha community, Maha has welcomed both indie favorites, such as Death Cab for Cutie, and then-rising stars like Lizzo. And after a brief hiatus in 2024, the festival returned stronger than ever this past August, headlined by the Pixies.

Toohey and App are two of the original founders, with App serving as the current treasurer of Maha’s board; Twit is the board president and interim executive director. Together, they believe Maha benefits both music lovers and the city at large.

“It’s really important for companies recruiting people to come to Omaha to have a successful music festival that is locally owned and managed as a nonprofit,” says Twit. “Maha has become part of the cultural landscape of Omaha.”