The eBusiness Research Center is hosting its first e-Scholars Retreat, with hopes of building a community of practice in e-business research.

This university-wide retreat is the first of its kind. It runs from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Nittany Lion Inn, Ballroom C.

The focus of this retreat is "laying down the foundation for community of practice of e-business scholars," said Dianne Nesbit, eBRC research fellow and organizer of the retreat.

This event benefits the entire university, because there is currently a converging economy, and people are focused on the Internet. It will bring prestige to the university, Nesbit said.

Sixty-five scholars plan to attend the retreat. They will come from the Smeal College of Business Administration, the School of Information Sciences and Technology, the College of Agricultural Sciences, College of Communications and College of Engineering, as well as professors from the commonwealth campuses.

The scholars will have a chance to introduce themselves in a session called "Laying the foundation for the community of practice," where they will discuss challenges and opportunities with e-business issues.

After lunch, the participants will form breakout groups to discuss the e-business issues from the morning session and to talk about recommendations for e-business at Penn State. Each group will develop a report with specific actions for scholars, as well as Penn State as a whole, to pursue.

An objective of the retreat is to formalize research affiliations between Penn State faculty and the center and to identify areas for collaborative research in the e-business space, Nirmal Pal, executive director of the eBRC, said in an eBRC press release.

The retreat will help fully develop the first university-wide research portal, like Yahoo.com.

On the eBRC Web site (www.ebrc.psu.edu), the portal is already available, but it is not finished. The retreat-goers look to finish the portal.

"For example, if a student was interested in an e-business project, he could find experts in the field and help in terms of information using this portal," said Nesbit. "It's a way of centralizing everything to one massive portal."

Currently, the portal would just be centralized to Penn State, but in the future, the goal is to expand it nationally and globally.

The eBRC is an effort of the Smeal College and the IST School. Its corporate sponsors are IBM, UNISYS, Xerox, AT&T Wireless and CIGNA Group Insurance, according to the release.