The BB&T Center for Free Enterprise

The College of Business and the College of Social Sciences at Florida State University will expand their academic offerings, thanks to a pair of major gifts announced fall 2008 by financial services company BB&T Corp.

BB&T presented the university with two gifts totaling $3 million to establish several new programs. One will encourage a thorough discussion of the moral foundations of capitalism; another will examine the proper role of government in a free-market economy; and a third will help to train future teachers of economics.

With one of the BB&T gifts, the Department of Finance in the College of Business and the Department of Economics in the College of Social Sciences will establish a joint BB&T Program of Free Enterprise.

Specifically in the Department of Finance, the gift will:
  • create a professorship to develop and promote a free-enterprise curriculum;
  • fund the development of a new course, "Free Enterprise and Ethics." Included in the course will be a lecture series based on BB&T’s core values (www.bbt.com/about/corporategovernance) titled "Perspectives on Free Enterprise." Eventually this new course will become part of a new Certificate Program in Free Enterprise and Ethics;
  • create a Web site that focuses on the program’s free-enterprise principles; and
  • support four new doctoral fellowships; and
  • support the undergraduate organization Students in Free Enterprise.