This spring, Missouri University of Science and Technology’s student entrepreneurship club is sponsoring a lecture series titled “SPARK,” which is designed to give students access to entrepreneurs, investors and community leaders. The lectures are free and open to the public.

The series is sponsored by the Technical Innovators and Entrepreneurs Society (TIES) student chapter at Missouri S&T. The group started the lecture series to show students that they, too, can make a large impact. Each lecture will provide an example of an entrepreneur or other leader that students can follow.

The next speaker in the series will be John Lovitt, a social entrepreneurship expert and Missouri S&T’s first entrepreneur-in-residence. He will speak at 5 p.m. Thursday, April 16, at the Technology Development Center, located at 900 Innovation Dr. on the campus of Missouri S&T in Rolla. Lovitt, a retired former senior vice president of field operations at IBM/Rational Software and retired CEO of Pattern Inside, earned a master of science degree in computer science from Missouri S&T in 1970.

All future lectures will be held at 5 p.m. Thursdays in the Technology Development Center. The following speakers are tentatively scheduled during the series:

— April 23 — Jim Mimlitz, president of both Navionics Research and SCADAmetrics, and a 1988 electrical engineering graduate of Missouri S&T.

— April 30 — Grant Folkmann, a patent attorney with experience working with startup companies in the oil and gas industry. Folkmann is a 2003 chemical engineering graduate of Missouri S&T.

For more information about TIES, visit web.mst.edu/~ties.