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The Business Opportunity Program is a minority scholarship program at Purdue University. It was started forty-five years ago in 1968 as a way to diversify the student body. The creator was John Day, a former Dean of Krannert. The Business Opportunity Program has been successful for over forty years and has produced CEO's, entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers and more. While the program was started by John Day and originally directed by Dan Schendel,  only one year later in 1969 Dr. Cornell A. Bell took over as director of the program. Dr. Bell recruited hundreds of diverse students at both the graduate and undergraduate level to Krannert School of Management. He served as a father figure, and mentor to many, if not all, of these students that he recruited himself.

BOP Mission
The mission of the program relies on the three R's. Recruiting, Re-tooling, and Releasing successful students back into the community to become corporate leaders and continue to help the BOP family increase. BOP provides a sense of community and a sense family within the students and alumni. It helps to provide underrepresented students with the resources and insight they need to become successful within the business management school and then within the business community.

Title Needed
BOP is successful because it takes potential, minority students that may not be fully prepared for college and "coaches" them. By having seminars, tutoring, and building a network of staff and students, BOP participants are able to gain skills that help "level the playing field" when competing with majority students. BOP provides mentors and resources to students that may not have mentors already. Some of the students may not have parents that had their own college experience, so their mentors can guide them through the basics of a higher education.

Student Organizations
From the Business Opportunity Program came the Society of Minority Managers. SMM is a Krannert specific campus club that any student can join, but mainly consists of BOP members. The two main programs of SMM are their annual BOP conference and corporate networking reception.

History
The Business Opportunity Program, or BOP for short, was started April 5th, 1968, the Day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It was created in order to increase diversity and give underrepresented students access to a world class management education. The founder's names were Dan Schendel, Wilbur Lewellen, Charles Lawrence, Joseph Ullman and John S. Day, a former dean. During this time in history, it was unheard of for a group of five men to come together and create a program to increase the number of minority student enrollment. Because of this, the Business Opportunity Program was one of the first and most successful of its kind and was the first minority program implemented at Purdue Univerisity. The first director of the Program was Dan Schendel, a professor within Krannert. He began with the program in 1968, but had a hard time going into the Gary Indiana area to recruit students for the program. While recruiting, he met Dr. Bell in Gary and Bell took over the program from 1969-2006. After, Dr. Bell retired from the position, he was followed by Tina Davis for a short time from 2005-2007. In 2007, the current director of BOP, Darren Henry took over and he continues to run the program today.

Dr. Cornell A. Bell
Dr. Cornell A. Bell was born in Evansville Indiana and earned his bachelor's degree in 1947 at Indiana University and then continued on to earn his masters in 1952 and a doctoral degree from Purdue university in 1972 (Krannert). When he wasn't working towards these degrees, he was working as a chemist for Stauffer Chemical Company, or teaching science at Pulaski School in Gary Indiana. Other jobs he added to his resume include working as a guidance counselor, assistant principal and principal at Gary Froebel School and Gary Tolleston High School (Krannert).

Dr. Bell was asked to take over the position of the Business Opportunities Program in 1969 after meeting Dan Schendel who was currently running the BOP program. Dan and Dr. Bell both realized that Bell was more qualified to do the work of BOP. While was director, Dr. Bell helped to recruit hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students which in turn helped to increase diversity on the Purdue University West Lafayette Campus (Krannert). Dr. Bell's efforts to increase diversity on college campuses were widely recognized and he received several awards for his work (Krannert).

In 1987, Bell was awarded the Special Boilermaker Award from the Purdue Alumni Association. In 1990 He recieved the M. Beverly Stone Non-Academic Counseling Award. He also received the Indiana Bell Ward and Harlod T. Amrine Visionary Award in 1991, and 1994 respectively.

Dr. Bell continued to run the BOP program until 2006, but his last year was overlapped with the new director that was going to take his place, Tina Davis. Tina began in 2005. Dr. Bell soon died only three years later in 2009, but he left behind his legacy, hundreds of successful business students and a world-class, nationally recognized minority business management program. If it was not for Dr. Bell and other people like him, Krannert School of Management, Purdue University and other management schools around the country may not be as culturally diverse as they are now.