Changes

Innovation is often associated with specific majors such as entrepreneurship and engineering, when it should, instead, be portrayed as a tool and skill for students of all majors and backgrounds. This strategic priority is focused on exposing students to innovation in the everyday classroom and then equipping them with the resources they need to execute their ideas. The first part of the strategy revolves around creating a physical space on campus for ideation, research and flexible collaboration. UNF currently lacks innovation infrastructure, with the majority of it being spread across campus (such as the VR lab) or only being available to specific groups of students such as business majors. One physical space can help integrate these resources, providing technological and rapid prototyping resources, sensory stimulants and open areas for networking and collaboration. Apart from this, there will also be a people-driven component to the space which will host an annual interdisciplinary innovation challenge, student-led pop-up workshops and a platform for students and faculty with similar research interests to collaborate.

The second part of this priority is built around familiarizing students with innovation in the classroom. This can be facilitated by the innovation lab or be a standalone project. Fortunately, incorporating innovation is feasible for virtually any subject and does not require any major curriculum restructuring or otherwise. It could be done through something as simple as offering one project-based learning activity, a guided teamwork assignment or using common design thinking ideation techniques while ideating for regular assignments. This can help restructure learning to meet real-world application, helping students actively gauge ways that classroom concepts can be applied to solve problems. They can then be directed to the central space where they can further develop and find the resources to take action on their ideas.