April 30, 2008  

Pellissippi State’s Small Business Development Center wins excellence award

The Knoxville Small Business Development Center office, an affiliate of Pellissippi State Technical Community College, has been chosen to receive the 2008 Service Excellence and Innovation Award by the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Tennessee district office in Nashville.

Front row (l-r), Jutta Bangs, senior business specialist, Tennessee Small Business Development Center, Roane State Community College; Larry Rossini, director, and Jane Shelton, administrative assistant, TSBDC, Pellissippi State Technical Community College. Back row (l-r), Joe Andrews, senior business specialist, TSBDC, Pellissippi State, and David Tiller, business development specialist, Tennessee District Office, U.S. Small Business Administration. Unavailable for photo: Bruce Hayes, senior business specialist, TSBDC, Pellissippi State.

The award was presented April 22 at a luncheon at the Knoxville Small Business Expo. The expo took place at the Knox County Health Department in conjunction with National Small Business Week, April 21-25.

According to W. Clinton Smith, SBA district director, the award is a new category of recognition for outstanding performance among the Tennessee SBDC’s network of 20 centers and satellite offices. Each office is affiliated with an institution of the Tennessee Board of Regents, the governing body for Pellissippi State.

“Pellissippi State will receive this award because of the excellent services they provide to small businesses in the Knoxville area,” Smith said. “The staff has been particularly creative in devising new ways to deliver training to people in remote areas who may not have individual access to more traditional learning applications.”

“We are very honored to receive the award,” said Teri Brahams, executive director of Business and Community Services at Pellissippi State. “Our center has been extremely resourceful in assisting small-business clients to become successful in a wide array of business ventures since it was established in the early 1980s.”

The Knoxville SBDC office is under the direction of Larry Rossini. The staff also includes Joe Andrews and Bruce Hayes, senior business specialists, and Jane Shelton, secretary. An affiliate office is operated in cooperation with Roane State Community College. Jutta Bangs is the senior business specialist for that office.

In 2007, the Knoxville SBDC provided assistance to 560 clients, resulting in 30 new businesses, creating 203 new jobs, retaining 1,537 jobs, increasing sales by $6.5 million and pumping $13.8 million in capital investment into the local economy.

“We provide in-depth, high-quality, confidential assistance, advice and training to small-business owners and those who want to start their own business,” Brahams said, “and most of the services continue to be offered at little or no cost to our clients.”

Pellissippi State’s SBDC was nominated for the Service Excellence and Innovation Award by Patrick Geho, state executive director of the TSBDC lead center at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro.

“In reviewing the work of all the centers in the state network, I have observed that the Knoxville center is consistently thinking out of the box in providing first-rate business counseling and training services to entrepreneurs and small-business owners.”

The Knoxville SBDC is a collaborative effort, with offices in the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership building, the Blount County Chamber of Commerce building and the Oak Ridge Chamber building. The center is funded by the Small Business Administration, TBR and the State of Tennessee.

Counseling services are free and confidential and can cover such topics as preparation of business plans, recordkeeping and accounting, government procurement, financial planning, sales and marketing, international trade, transportation and distribution. Services are available to individuals, small businesses and for-profit organizations.

For additional information about the program, visit Pellissippi State’s Business and Community Services Web site at www.pstcc.edu/bcs or call the Knoxville SBDC office at (865) 246-2663.

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