News and Events - UMaine alum
aims to boost student entrepreneurs
|
Perry
Hunter
|
A University of Maine alumnus and savvy
businessman with a penchant for tinkering has established a fund
to support creative students who are developing new products.
"I want students to think of new inventions,"
says Perry Hunter, who graduated in 1952 with a degree in
economics. "There's so much opportunity in this world. Every day
there are new things that can be developed – inventions that
people can dream up to make life easier and better."
The Perry Hunter Product Development Fund will
provide awards to innovative undergraduate and graduate students
who are putting their ideas and insight to work and creating new
goods and services. The money may be used to cover research,
marketing and prototype expenses, and will be awarded by the
director of UMaine's Student Innovation Center where students gain
the knowledge, tools and inspiration to help them become
successful innovators and entrepreneurs. First preference will be
given to students working on products related to enhancing the
lobster industry or those designed to protect the marine
environment.
The idea is to help young people capitalize on
their ingenuity so they can remain in Maine and start their own
businesses.
"All you have to do is find a need to fill,"
says Hunter, who did just that in the late 1960's. A self
described "tinkerer," he began experimenting with a hand-operated
machine used for tapping into water mains to expand service. He
ended up creating a hydraulic-powered unit that could operate the
equipment faster and more efficiently and allow service to
continue uninterrupted to existing customers.
"It was all done by hand initially," he
explains. "It was a long drawn out process that took hours and
hours. I said to myself, there's no sense doing it by hand when
you can do it by power. Why do backbreaking work when you can use
mechanical gearing to make it easier?"
It wasn't long before he developed his own
pipe tapping company in Connecticut.
Now he wants Maine to benefit from students'
entrepreneurial talent.
Dr. Bob Bayer, executive director of the
Lobster Institute, an organization based at UMaine that focuses on
protecting, conserving and enhancing the lobster industry, praised
Hunter for "giving back to his community" by directing his gift
toward students whose innovative projects could benefit the
lobster industry.
"This fund will allow UMaine students working
with the Lobster Institute to also find ways to contribute to
these communities – by using their creative ideas and energy to
find ways to get to most out of the lobster resource, or perhaps
to improve the safety of people who lobster on the ocean, or any
of a number of innovations that might advance the lobster
industry," said Bayer, UMaine professor of animal and veterinary
sciences.
Hunter credits the University of Maine with
nurturing his creative spirit and "giving me the desire to get
ahead."
Always on the look out for jobs
that would help pay tuition, he decided as a first year student to
open a concession business and sell hot dogs, hamburgers, soft
drinks and cookies to students in the residence halls.
The Dean of Men heartily endorsed
the idea, Hunter recalls.
"Go for it!" he told the young entrepreneur.
Hunter subsequently "did anything and
everything" to put himself through school, including cleaning
Fogler Library, scrubbing pots and pans at a camp on Sebago Lake,
measuring tree growth in the Colorado forests and staffing a fire
look out tower in Washington State.
"I never had any trouble finding work," he
says.
UMaine gave him "a great opportunity to go out
and present myself to the world, work hard, be diligent and give
back," says Hunter, who held a number of jobs to support his wife
and four children. Before he started his own company he worked as
a technical representative for Union Carbide Corporation and as a
sales-service representative at American Cast Iron Pipe Co. He
also bought and repaired old houses, made weathervanes and
restored antiques. He still enjoys reconditioning old items and
this summer he plans to open a business called "Antique Hunters."
"I like to work all the time. I'm a
workaholic," he says.
Class agent for at least a decade, Hunter
helped organize his 55th class reunion. Aiming to raise
$55,000 for scholarships, he spent hours on the phone talking to
classmates all over the country, making sure they planned to
attend the reunion and to make a financial contribution.
Meanwhile, his next creative endeavor is just
around the corner.
"I'm always waking up in the middle of the
night with another idea," he says. "Something else to do. It's
just so much fun having a challenge."
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