Consistent with the spirit of the University of Wisconsin’s top-25 national ranking for entrepreneurship last week, the Wiscon-trepreneur initiative announ-ced the winners of the Student Venture Seed Grant Competition Monday.

According to Allen Dines, assistant director at UW’s Office of Corporate Relations, five applicants presented their ideas to a panel of judges that consisted of university employees as well as local business leaders. Four of those five were then awarded $3,000 to help further their businesses.

Alex Goldstein, a UW junior and partner for Badger Trips, a company that provides students with affordable transportation and lodging options for away sporting events, said he and his partners applied for the grant to provide more security for their venture.

“Basically what the money has done is give us a cushion to work with,” he said.

According to Goldstein, Badger Trips has allocated funds from the grant for marketing, insurance, internships and website development.

Overall, Goldstein said the grant is a great way for UW to help students who want to start or have started their own businesses.

“This is a great way to help you get that initial capital, especially since it’s your school providing it,” he said.

All of the applicants greatly exceeded the expectations of those involved, according to both Dines and Doug Bradley, assistant director of OCR.

“We didn’t anticipate at the front end that they would all be that good,” Dines said.

Applicants needed to demonstrate dedication and commitment to the venture and prove the vitality of the business, according to Bradley. This included formulating business plans and detailing how the $3,000 would be spent. In addition to winning the grant, the winners will have to detail how they spent the money six months later.

The money to support the grants came from the Chancellor’s Office and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which was received by UW in 2007 and awarded a five-year, $4 million grant to 19 campuses across the country in order to expand and promote entrepreneurship.

“What we want to do is encourage students to take advantage of those creative and intuitive ideas that they’ve got about ways to do things better,” he said.

Focusing on UW and the state more specifically, Bradley said, “Our goal is to eventually brand Wisconsin through the Wisconsin Idea. We want Wisconsin to be identified as a state where entrepreneurship thrives.”

Besides the Student Venture Seed Grant, the Wiscontrepreneur initiative has done a variety of things to become more accessible to students across campus and not solely to students in the business and engineering schools.

In order to reach students beyond the business and engineering disciplines, 75 curriculum offerings have been added and classes have been opened up to students who are non-business and non-engineering majors. There are also a variety of competitions, as well as a residential learning community, that was set up in Sellery Hall to promote entrepreneurship.