School:William Jewell College

Overview

William Jewell College is a small liberal arts institution established in 1849. The college has called Liberty, Missouri its home for over 165 years. Today the campus is about 200 acres in size, and sits on a hill overlooking the Kansas City skyline.  The average enrollment is around 1,100 students, making the student to faculty ratio eleven to one. The college places a strict emphasis on service, leadership, and spiritual growth with a motto, “Deo Fisus Labora,” meaning, “Trust in God, Work.”

William Jewell advertises their four-year degree as being “a journey rich with opportunities.” With over 40 majors to choose from, the college provides students with opportunities to collaborate in a state of the art technology based learning commons, utilize a Journey Grant ($2,000.00) to pursue a passion of their own design, be a Division II athlete, research with a professor in their major field of study, launch an entrepreneurial venture through the college's Idea Exchange, and much more. The school's motto is "Live what you learn."

The college focuses on achievement, experiential learning and leadership, and critical thinking. Consistently ranked among America’s best colleges, William Jewell College is cited for small class sizes, low student debt, high graduation rates, commitment to service, and overall value. 

Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Presently, Jewell students from physics and business are the most engaged in entrepreneurship. This is because of the focus on engineering and entrepreneurial courses, respectively. One goal of the 2014-15 Leadership Circle is to engage interdisciplinary students and help market our existing resources to students across campus. There are several student organizations dedicated to entrepreneurship and innovation, detailed below. Additionally, students leverage resources in the Kansas City entrepreneurial ecosystem, such as Lean Startup Machine workshops. There are also many makerspaces that encourage collaboration among students and students have many resources through on-campus faculty. Students also have the Adobe Suite at their disposal on specific computers in the Pryor Learning Commons. There is also a 3D printer. There is a great amount of resources that students could be using in entrepreneurial endeavors. 

Faculty Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Faculty have two primary avenues for innovation: inside the class and outside the class. Innovation in the classroom requires student interaction in place of a purely lecture-based course. Jewell's mission to create critical thinkers through its core curriculum is served by this end: a liberal arts education is furthered by enabling students to voice their thoughts, hear criticism, and increase the rigor of their intellectual engagement. Some courses already embody this ideal, but others have room to grow. There are, however, opportunities in the business and marketing classes to do real, hands-on marketing and product research through projects. This could be a great jumping off point. There are many project-based classes that could expand more into entrepreneurialship. Transitioning towards a curriculum that supports innovation and an entrepreneurial mindset is a gradual process that the current Leadership Circle aims to begin.

Innovation and Entrepreneurship On Campus

At William Jewell, students have many available resources to use when it comes to I&E. The school offers various clubs, events, and maker spaces that are for student use.

Clubs and Organizations

The clubs and organizations that we have on campus are the TECH Club, E-Society, InScape Digital Magazine, and Jewell Communication and Theatre Society. The TECH Club, also known as Teach Everyone Coding and Hardware, is a club that reaches out to campus to educate and create awareness of technology and coding. The E-Society is the Jewell Entrepreneur Society that does events throughout the year as well as creates an interest for entrepreneurship and innovation in the student body.  The Jewell Communication and Theatre Society helps assist students with networking with professionals and teaches about the possible careers in this subject matter.

Events

William Jewell College offers and extensive list of events for students to go to which include an extensive lecture series, Big Omaha, Big Kansas City, the Kansas City Maker Faire, and One Million Cups. Organizations around campus also contribute to events that help inspire innovation and entrepreneurship such as the E-Society, a professor sponsored weekly networking meeting called BizTime Coffee, Lean Startup Machine in Kansas City that is sponsored by the Business Department, and Think Big Pitch Camp that is also sponsored by the Business Department.

Spaces

The College built a new building called the Pryor Learning Commons just over a year ago that consists of spaces dedicated to I&E. These spaces are open to the whole campus and are able to be reserved for any time of the day. These spaces include a graphics suite, an audio suite, a 3D printing suite, an editing suite for graphics, and  multiple collaboration spaces.

On Jewell’s campus there are two shops in the Physics Department that are the machine shop and the electronics shop. These spaces, are however, mostly used by students in the Physics Department. These shops require special training to use which makes them less accessible to the larger student body.

A private shop is located about thirty-five minutes away called the Design Shop and it is available for student use. It is a business professor initiative at bringing design and creativity to campus and to the community.

Evaluation of Innovation and Entrepreneurship

William Jewell is growing its rapidly with its Creativity and Innovation program and other campus-wide efforts, and the UI Fellows aim to catalyze this further, increasing student engagement and expanding available resources. Jewell has collected data from faculty and student interviews about innovation, entrepreneurship, and engagement over the last year, and this content area will eventually summarize those data along with that collected by the Leadership Circle.

Related Resources

William Jewell College Strategic Priorities

2014-2015 Leadership Circle: Bradley Dice, James Milam, Kate McFerren, Amelia Hanzlick, Conner Hazelrigg