BRIDGE prepares for spring fold-up. (Sault Ste Marie).

An award-winning Sault Ste. Marie entrepreneurial program is folding up this spring.

The Bi-National Regional Initiative Developing Greater Education, known as BRIDGE, will cease to exist at the end of May. Sault College and Lake Superior State University announced in December they will not renew their financial support for the co-operative educational venture.

Their current affiliation agreement expires at the end of May.

BRIDGE is a consortium founded 10 years ago by Algoma University College, Sault College and Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., along With local economic development and community leaders.

Modelled after enterprise education programs at Brock University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the not-for-profit corporation formed in 1993 to develop cross-border educational ties in the Twin Saults, as well as foster local entrepreneurial growth by marrying education with business creation.

"BRIDGE by and large fulfilled its mandate," says Mike Delfre, the program's executive director since 1996. "Time will tell whether the collaboration will increase or decrease."

BRIDGE served as an intermediary between the three institutions to work on curriculum collaborations, says Delfre, "but there were obstacles to collaboration (amongst the three institutions) that we couldn't get over."

Among BRIDGE's achievements, Delfre lists their entrepreneurship program at the university and high school level as having the greatest impact in the community, as well as the formation of an international division between the three schools involving justice, teaching and fine arts programs.

Their annual entrepreneurship competition will continue under Algoma University College's sponsorship.

"Some of the older members of the board of directors are still looking at a restructured BRIDGE, but I don't know what it will look like," says Delfre, who plans on going into the private scholarship business.

Among BRIDGE's last projects was sponsoring the $100,000 Carr-Gordon report funded by the Ministry of Education to identify potential growth opportunities and shared services between Sault College and Algoma University College.

"The linkages remain very strong and will continue even without BRIDGE because they've been in place for a few years," says Delfre.

He maintains BRIDGE has left a lasting legacy by spawning an entrepreneurial culture in the Sault that has changed the orientation of education by integrating school curriculum with business creation.

The program's profile was heightened in 2001 when it was presented with a Northern Ontario Business Award in 2001 as Entrepreneurial Community of the Year. They received a similar award in 2000 from a northern Michigan economic development agency known as Operation Action.

"I have learned a lot about knowledge-based economic development," says Delfre. "And I believe that is the next evolution of how we're going to have to transform educational institutions into creators of small enterprise as an engine of the economy."

The program encouraged young people at the university and high school level to start thinking like entrepreneurs with their own self-generated opportunities and eventually graduate straight into their own startup companies.

At least 10 businesses across North America have been created by BRIDGE program graduates, says Delfre.

With only an executive director and a part-time secretary on staff, BRIDGE received core funding for its $100,000 annual budget by the three member institutions, the City of Sault Ste. Marie Economic Development Corp. and individual project funding from various government agencies.