Creators, Not Consumers: Bowie State Prepares Students to Lead in the Age of AI

When President Aminta H. Breaux first proposed building a residence hall connected to an entrepreneurship center, she said, people looked at her as if she had arrived from Mars. Today that idea is the Entrepreneurship Living Learning Community, and it sits at the heart of a campuswide strategy shaping how Bowie State University prepares students for a world being reshaped by artificial intelligence.

That strategy was on full display Oct. 2, when Bowie State hosted the sixth annual HBCU+ Entrepreneurship Conference. Built around the theme “Innovation, Entrepreneurship and AI: Building What’s Next,” the gathering drew more than 750 registered participants and speakers, including entrepreneur John Hill, podcaster and entrepreneur Jay Hill and TEDCO President Tammi Thomas. Students, faculty, investors and leaders from Historically Black Colleges and Universities across the country came to explore how emerging technology is changing the way people learn, work and launch businesses.

“The world is changing rapidly. Workplaces are changing rapidly,” Dr. Breaux told attendees. “We believe that students should not simply become consumers of emerging technology. We want them to be creators, innovators, entrepreneurs and researchers, leading the way, not waiting for AI to happen to us.”

Bowie State is one of the few universities in the nation to make entrepreneurship education part of every student’s academic experience. Rather than confining it to the business school, the university infuses entrepreneurial thinking across disciplines with a clear goal: every Bulldog graduates with an entrepreneurial mindset, whether they launch a company or bring creative problem-solving to someone else’s.

“It starts with an idea,” Dr. Breaux said. “We’re about taking ideas to creation. That’s what entrepreneurial thinking is about.”

The Entrepreneurship Innovation Center anchors this effort. Linked to the living learning community, which offers tech-infused classrooms, a makerspace and business incubators, the center connects students with mentors, competitions and real-world experience. Its approach is drawing national attention. This year the center received the 2026 Excellence in Co-Curricular Innovation award from the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, competing alongside nationally recognized institutions. In 2024, it became the first HBCU honored in its category by the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers.

“This was more than a conference; it was a powerful demonstration of what happens when an entrepreneurial ecosystem comes together with a shared vision and purpose,” said Johnetta Hardy, executive director of the Entrepreneurship Innovation Center and chair of the conference.

Keeping pace with technology was the message of the opening keynote. Robbie Melton, vice president of SMART Technology Innovation at Tennessee State University, took the stage wearing smart glasses that can record, listen and translate. For people who are blind, she explained, the same glasses can connect to a live person who describes what the wearer is seeing in real time. Tennessee State is already testing them with campus departments, including security.

Melton’s message was simple: Policies matter, but students and faculty need to see “AI in action.” She showed a video on how 3D printing with living cells could one day help rebuild human tissue and closed by composing a Motown-style song about the conference in under a minute using names shouted from the audience.

She also turned the spotlight on her hosts, praising Bowie State’s nursing simulation lab as the best her team had seen. “Sometimes you don’t know what you have until someone else comes in and gives it a stamp of approval,” she said.

The conference also connected students with entrepreneurs from the surrounding community. Malcolm Tyson, lead organizer of 1 Million Cups Prince George’s County, a weekly forum where business owners bring real challenges to the community for feedback, spent the day sharing his path with students curious about his background in accounting. A graduate of North Carolina A&T State University, Tyson said the conference was exactly where he wanted to be.

Bowie State’s investment in that ecosystem is backed by resources. BSU BOLD: The Campaign for Excellence closed at $128.5 million, the largest fundraising campaign in university history, and Breaux noted that the endowment has grown from about $7 million to $89 million during her tenure, expanding scholarships and making an HBCU education more affordable. In a video greeting,Gov. Wes Moore called the conference a reflection of Maryland’s commitment to inclusive innovation and to ensuring every Marylander has access to opportunity.

As AI reshapes every industry, Bowie State is betting that the graduates who thrive will be the ones who know how to build with it. “At Bowie State, we’re not just talking about the future of entrepreneurship and innovation,” Hardy said. “We’re helping build it. That’s Bowie Bold!”