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Business Opportunity Program

The Business Opportunity Program is a minority scholarship program at Purdue University. It was 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 not only produced CEO's and entrepreneurs, but doctors and lawyers as well.

BOP students begin their college education a semester before any other students on campus. They are enrolled in an eight week, intense, summer school session that requires them to take 12 credit hours. Some of these classes are specific for BOP students and some of them are general classes all incoming freshman will take.

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 works provides a sense of community and a sense family within the students and alumni. During the BOP Summer Program, these students are together, all day, every day, for eight weeks straight. They learn to lean on each other's knowledge to pass their summer classes and look to their mentors for guidance.

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. Because there are so few African American and Latino students that enroll in Krannert, building a sense of community and teamwork within the students is one of the missions of the program.

BOP Success
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.

The goal of this is to eject all BOP students from the summer with 4.0 GPAs at the beginning of their freshman year, for them to be accustomed to college level courses and how intense they are, and for them to me familiar with the campus and being on their own as college 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.

Famous Alumni
Roland G. Parrish: Roland G. Parrish is an entrepreneur. The President, CEO and owner of Parrish McDonald's. Roland owns 25 franchises in Northern Texas. Roland also may be known for his $2million dollar contribution to the Management and Economics Library in Krannert School of Management.

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 University.

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
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 because the current director was having difficulties going into inner-city areas to recruit students. Dr. Bell recruited hundreds of diverse students at both the graduate and undergraduate level to Krannert School of Management.

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. 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.

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. Dr. Bell's efforts to increase diversity on college campuses were widely recognized and he received several awards for his work.

In 1987, Bell was awarded the Special Boilermaker Award from the Purdue Alumni Association. In 1990 He received 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 past away only three years later in 2009.