For many people, being their own boss is the definition of the American dream. But it’s the few people who have the vision and the drive to make that dream a reality.

People need opportunities and resources to gain experience in their chosen fields. City College continues to demonstrate that it is a center for creativity and future business leaders.

On Oct. 9, Lorrie Thomas, a former City College student and now a well-known web-marketing consultant, spoke to a packed crowd of aspiring entrepreneurs at the Fe Bland forum. Thanks to the Scheinfeld Center for Entrepreneurship, which sponsored the event, students were able to gain a better understanding on how to utilize the Internet’s revolutionary affect on marketing.

In addition to special events like Thomas’s, City College offers a wide range of classes, such as “Entrepreneurship: Opportunity Analysis” to help students prepare for their future enterprises.

Examples of this City College success continue to show up in the community.

Backyard Bowls is a business created by alumni Pete Heth and Dan Goddard. The two put their experience gained from City College courses into starting a successful local business, bringing Hawaiian snacks to Santa Barbara.

SBMenus.com, an online business promoting discounts for restaurants around town, is the brainchild of former students Bryan Brand and Dusty Stutsman. Another successful Web site created by City College students is CampusBooze.com, which services 15 California college campuses on alcohol budgeting.

Santa Barbara City College fosters an atmosphere of creativity and ambition for the hopeful businessperson. The campus is full of not only youthful energy, but also seasoned experience as teens interact with mature adult learners, sometimes difficult to attain at a large four-year university.

Proof of this is the student-professor team Paul Nolan and Armando Arias. They invented and patented a machine that turns thin flim into flexible electronic screens, solar panels, and may other possibilities. These two individuals used the facilities and the resources that City College has to offer and created an invention that could revolutionize the way the world produces and uses power.

And in this issue of The Channels, marketing professor Julie Brown has written her own novel and created companies she’s using as teaching tools for her own students to develop marketing skills for the real world.

If you’re one of many current college students who say they don’t plan to work for anyone but themselves, there are few better places to learn how to be an entrepreneur.

There are many valuable resources and connections that enable students to prepare them to start a business in any area of interest. Evidence of this is appearing more and more every day.