CORE

 

Creative Brief

May 5, 2026

Participants

Brian Schaffner, Megan Olfert, and David Mumm

Overview

CORE will bring Walla Walla University’s existing entrepreneurship programs, courses, competitions, mentorship, and resources together into one recognizable ecosystem. Its purpose is larger than teaching students how to start businesses. CORE is intended to develop an entrepreneurial mindset that students can carry into businesses, organizations, professions, and communities throughout their lives. The long-term ambition is for Walla Walla University to become known as the Adventist university for entrepreneurship.

The CORE identity should be instantly recognizable and make students feel that they are becoming part of something valuable. That sense of belonging, however, is not about dependence on a group. Entrepreneurship often requires someone to stand alone, make a decision, take a risk, and move forward. CORE should provide the relationships, resources, knowledge, and support that help students develop the confidence to do that.

CORE should be understood as an opportunity for students from any major who are interested in bringing ideas to life, creating something new, or learning to think entrepreneurially within an existing organization.

Success will ultimately be measured in students who try, learn, build meaningful relationships, apply what they have learned, recover from failure, and keep moving forward.

Immediate Projects Include

Logo Development

Identity Development

  • Letterhead

  • Business card

  • Envelope

  • Note card

  • Note card envelope

  • Apparel application

Future Projects Include

Program Communications

  • Concise Program Overview Rack Card

  • Digital/web content

  • PowerPoint template

  • Welcome Back Bash booth and supporting graphics

  • Pole banners

Welcome Box

  • Personalized gift box

  • Hoodie

  • Tumbler

  • Phone battery charger

  • CORE sticker

U-Pitch Competition

  • U-Pitch sub-brand

  • Competition identity and supporting materials

Creative Considerations

The CORE identity should communicate connection and support while keeping the individual entrepreneur at the center. CORE provides the framework, relationships, tools, and knowledge, but the individual student must ultimately take action. It should also communicate how seemingly separate disciplines—communication, accounting, marketing, management, ethics, and others—connect to form a broader entrepreneurial education.

CORE’s Christian foundation is essential to the program and should be clearly communicated throughout its materials. It does not, however, require overt Christian symbolism within the logo itself. The identity should first read as a strong entrepreneurship program, with its Christian foundation expressed through the program’s character, language, values, and supporting communications.

The visual system should comply with established Walla Walla University brand standards while creating a distinct and recognizable identity for CORE.

The idea of parts coming together to form a whole is important. The program integrates knowledge, people, experiences, and relationships that an entrepreneur will need throughout a career. Puzzle pieces were discussed as a useful metaphor for this idea, but the literal symbol is too familiar. The identity should find a more distinctive expression of connection, integration, and continual development.

The identity should avoid predictable entrepreneurship and institutional clichés. It should not depend on familiar devices such as light bulbs, rockets, upward arrows, mountain peaks, seedlings, gears, handshakes, pyramids, literal religious symbols, or obvious puzzle-piece graphics.

The brand voice should be entrepreneurial, energetic, practical, welcoming, inclusive, and challenging. It should never sound like empty motivational hype. CORE is about putting ideas into practice, developing useful skills, and learning to communicate and act with confidence.

Program Description

CORE begins with the entrepreneur rather than the idea.

Traditional entrepreneurship programs can concentrate heavily on ventures, funding, maker spaces, technology, and the mechanics of bringing an idea to market. CORE begins further inside—with the individual who must eventually make the decisions, build the relationships, assume the risk, and lead the venture.

The program develops that person through four interconnected ideas:

Courage
The willingness to act despite uncertainty. CORE develops the confidence to ask questions, take meaningful risks, learn from failure, and move forward even when the outcome is uncertain.

Ownership
Students develop character, credibility, self-awareness, personal responsibility, and ethical judgment. Entrepreneurship requires knowing who you are, understanding how you respond under pressure, accepting responsibility for decisions, and acting consistently with your values.

Relationships
Entrepreneurs may carry responsibility individually, but they do not succeed in isolation. CORE develops the ability to communicate, collaborate, build teams, seek advice, find mentors, and create lasting relationships with people whose experience and expertise can help.

Entrepreneur
Courage, Ownership, and Relationships work together to develop the Entrepreneur: someone prepared to identify opportunities, make decisions, take meaningful risks, learn continuously, and build something worthwhile.

CORE is both a support system and a courage builder. It gives students practical tools, entrepreneurial ways of thinking, connections with people who have done the work, and opportunities to apply what they learn in the real world.

The program includes formal entrepreneurial studies, a BBA concentration and minor, entrepreneurship courses, U-Pitch, mentorship, and Entrepreneur/Executive in Residence opportunities. The larger goal is to connect entrepreneurial thinking across the university rather than confine it to one department.

Competition

CORE’s strongest distinction is that it develops the entrepreneur before concentrating on the venture.

Many entrepreneurship programs emphasize tangible resources: innovation labs, technology, fabrication tools, pitch competitions, and the mechanics of launching a business. CORE places greater emphasis on mindset, character, self-awareness, ethical decision-making, relationships, mentorship, and the ability to turn learning into action.

That difference matters because a good idea alone does not create a successful entrepreneur. Students need to understand themselves, work effectively with others, make sound decisions, adapt, communicate, and continue learning.

Mentorship can become another significant differentiator. Entrepreneurs and executives in residence can give students direct access to experienced people who have already faced many of the decisions, mistakes, and challenges students will eventually encounter.

Among Adventist institutions, Andrews and Southwestern were identified as the most relevant current entrepreneurship programs to watch, while La Sierra represents another established program with significant resources. CORE’s long-term opportunity is not simply to duplicate these programs, but to become known for its distinctive emphasis on the entrepreneurial mindset and development of the whole person.

Target Audience & Market Realities

CORE’s primary audience at launch is Walla Walla University business students, followed closely by students in engineering and product design. From there, the audience expands across disciplines, and ultimately to any student who can benefit from entrepreneurial thinking.

Secondary audiences include:

  • Faculty and university leadership

  • Donors and financial supporters

  • Alumni

  • Entrepreneurs and executives

  • Mentors

  • Employers

  • Community business leaders

Students may initially understand entrepreneurship simply as starting a company, becoming their own boss, commercializing an idea, or creating the next successful product. CORE should broaden that understanding.

An entrepreneurial mindset can be equally valuable inside an existing company, hospital, nonprofit organization, engineering practice, design firm, or professional career. CORE should make clear that entrepreneurship is not limited to people planning to launch businesses.

For students outside the School of Business, the largest barrier may be relevance and time. Highly structured majors already place substantial demands on students. CORE will need to demonstrate clearly why the experience is worth their limited time rather than simply asking them to add another activity.

The program should also remain genuinely welcoming to students who are not Adventist or Christian. CORE can maintain a clearly Christian foundation while demonstrating those principles through hospitality, character, service, ethical behavior, and an inclusive community rather than assuming everyone arrives with the same faith experience.

User Benefits

CORE gives students more than access to equipment or instructions for starting a company. It develops people, thinking, relationships, and practical capability.

Students will develop:

  • Strong relationships with classmates, mentors, entrepreneurs, executives, faculty, and advisors

  • Communication and relationship-building skills

  • Financial understanding and business judgment

  • Better management of time and priorities

  • Greater self-awareness and emotional intelligence

  • Ethical decision-making rooted in character

  • The confidence to ask questions and seek expertise

  • The ability to apply classroom knowledge to real situations

  • Curiosity and a commitment to lifelong learning

  • A healthier understanding of risk and failure

Failure is an important part of that education. CORE should help students distinguish a failed attempt from a failed person. They should learn to avoid preventable mistakes, test ideas intelligently, recover, learn, and fail forward.

A student entering CORE may have an idea but little understanding of what it takes to act on it. They may fear asking basic questions, making mistakes, approaching experienced people, taking risks, or discovering that an idea does not work.

A student shaped by CORE should leave with greater courage to question and try, the relationships to know where to seek help, the curiosity to continue learning, and the resilience to use both success and failure as information.

The goal is not to eliminate risk or fear. It is to give students enough preparation, character, confidence, and support that fear no longer prevents action.

The strongest long-term proof of CORE will be students who describe the experience as one of the most valuable parts of their Walla Walla University education—and relationships they are still drawing upon decades later.

Most Important Point

The discussion repeatedly returned to courage, character, support, practical skills, curiosity, and lifelong learning. Together, they point to one central idea:

CORE develops entrepreneurial courage — the confidence, character, support, and skills to take meaningful risks and build something that matters.

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CONTACT:

David Mumm
Principal & Creative Director, Walla Walla Print Co.
(509) 386‑9334