The Times They Are a Changin?

Students in Free Enterprise Helps Businesses, Colleges

Bob Dylan was concerned about businessmen drinking his wine. Ray Stevens extolled them to “get down to business … if you can.”

It was the 1960s. “Business was a dirty word, and businessmen were robber barons,” remembers Dick Laird.

At least that’s the way college professors taught it at the time, which prompted Robert T. “Sonny” Davis, a Texas lawyer, to start an organization in 1975 to promote free enterprise on college campuses.

Laird is now vice president of that national organization — Students in Free Enterprise, which is headquartered in Springfield, Mo., and has a branch at three Northwest Arkansas colleges.

“That’s been erased,” Laird said of the anti-business sentiment of the flower children. “That’s what it originally started out to be,” he said, referring to the initial public relations effort.

SIFE now “provides leadership training, regional expositions and career opportunity fairs for thousands of college students on more than 700 campuses in 15 countries,” according to the organization’s literature. SIFE received $5.8 million in donations for the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31.

Bob Cowan of Rogers has been on the SIFE board for the past 16 years.

Cowan said Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., got involved in SIFE in the early 1980s after he heard a college professor badmouthing businessmen on an airplane flight from Fayetteville.

Now, several Wal-Mart executives are actively involved with SIFE, and Tom Coughlin, executive vice president with Wal-Mart, serves on the SIFE Board of Directors.

“SIFE students are unique because they have a passion for free enterprise and a desire to make a difference in their communities,” said Don Soderquist, former senior vice chairman at Wal-Mart. “Their dedication and hard work make them better business leaders and better people.”

Wal-Mart recruits about 10 percent of its new entry-level managers from SIFE, according to the organization’s brochure.

Local Involvement

There are branches of SIFE at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, John Brown University in Siloam Springs and the Northwest Arkansas Community College in Rogers.

The UA has been involved with SIFE for two years, said Rita Littrell, faculty SIFE sponsor. About 30 students are currently signed up for SIFE at the UA and 10 are “very active,” she said.

“We are still a new team with a lot to learn,” Littrell said. “The students benefit by learning, practicing and teaching about free enterprise. They apply principles and ideas learned in their classes.”

One example Littrell gave is the “Granny Goes Surfing” class, which teaches senior citizens how to surf the Internet.

“They may not be teaching principles of our free enterprise system,” Littrell said, “but the students determine a need in the market, develop a product to meet the need, market the product, and then conduct the classes. They learn about the preferences of the senior citizens regarding class locations and information they want to learn. The students learn that they already have skills that are valued by others in the marketplace. They enjoy the interaction with the seniors and giving back to the community.”

The UA also has a SIFE speaker series in which members from their Business Advisory Board are invited to speak on topics such as the global marketplace, resume development and presenting yourself in a job interview.

The SIFE students at the UA also participate through projects such as “Willy Walton’s Chocolate Factory,” where they organize a day-camp for elementary students and teach about global chocolate production.