ADA, Okla. – East Central University announces the appointment of Dr. Stacey Bolin as the faculty co-chair for the ECU Forward capital campaign.
ECU Forward is a comprehensive $36.3 million capital campaign dedicated to advancing ECU’s future. This initiative will enhance the ECU campus, strengthen academic programs and ensure that ECU students will continue to be provided with life-changing educational opportunities at an affordable cost.
Bolin is a professor, director of the Wilburn L. Smith Center for Entrepreneurship and Co-Director of the Business Scholar Program in ECU’s Harland C. Stonecipher School of Business (SSB).
She is an ECU alumna who earned a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Business Administration and a B.S. in Computer Science from ECU, where she was named the George Nigh award winner and was appointed to the USA Today All-American Academic Team during her senior year.
After spending time as a web programmer, she would then go on to earn her Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2004 and then in 2014, she earned her Doctor of Business Administration degree in Technology Entrepreneurship from Walden University.
Early on, Bolin worked in her family’s John Deere dealership. She successfully added, then sold, an ATV/UTV dealership before launching and selling another business with her husband, Brandon. Afterwards, she transitioned into sales and sales management.
In the fall of 2011, she would return to academics, ready to share her education and experiences with the students of ECU.
As the Director of the Wilburn L. Smith Center for Entrepreneurship, Bolin started the Tiger Tank Pitch Competition for individual high school and college students and teams to pitch new business ideas that are product or service oriented and answer questions about the pitch, idea and opportunity.
She coaches ECU teams for the annual Love’s Entrepreneur’s Cup competition, where ECU students have earned success every year since 2012. She also pioneered and currently chairs the executive committee for Oklahoma Business Week, a summer camp designed to teach future business leaders’ skills in leadership, communication, team building, responsibility, money management, entrepreneurship, marketing and much more.
Bolin and Dean Godwin, now ECU President, led U.S. Africa Business Week in Uganda in August of 2019 in partnership with two ECU SSB alums for 90+ Africans from three countries.
In addition to participating in the activities of the Association of Collegiate Marketing Educators, she also serves as the webmaster for the organization and she serves on the national ACBSP Global Business Education committee and actively participates in ACBSP regional and national events as a presenter.
Bolin has been presented with the 2015 Oklahoma Creativity Great Inspirations Award and a DaVinci Fellows award for creativity in the classroom the same year, the 2016 teaching excellence awards from ECU and ACBSP Region 6 and the 2019 NASBA Center for the Public Trust Campus Being a Difference Award.
Most recently, she received the 2023-24 Student Athletic Advisory Council Faculty Award at the Roary Awards and was named the 2022 & 2024 Microsoft Office Specialist Outstanding Educator.
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