Priorities:Washington University in St. Louis Student Priorities

Overview

Washington University in St. Louis sits at the heart of what is said to be the next "Silicon Valley". St. Louis was ranked as the number 1 emerging startup city in America by Popular Mechanics.  Sparked by Jim McKelvey, a Washington University alumni and the inventor of Square, St. Louis has drawn the attention of venture capitalists around America. Washington University has ridden this entrepreneurship wave and has exponentially expanded entrepreneurial education and opportunities for its students. Students in return have sparked many successful start ups such as IdeaLabs and BetaVersity, founded by a Washington University University Innovation Fellow, Blake Margraff.

As resources expand and experimental programs are tested by the administration, an increasing number of undergraduates are unaware of such opportunities. In contrast, entrepreneurial activity at the graduate level has grown dramatically in response to these opportunites. Undergraduates also don't have the opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship academically until they are almost graduates. 2015 University Innovation Fellows have a perfect opportunity to capitalize on this opportunity by acting as the main focal point for undergraduate entrepreneurship, empowering undergraduates to interact with faculty, and utilizing the powerful undergraduate career-driven culture.

The following are our student priorities to acheive this goal:

1. Creating a freshman orientation program
2. Creating a campus resources web portal
3. Advertising and generating traffic at Washington University's Co-Lab
4. Creating more opportunities for students to investigate the St. Louis startup scene

Strategic Priorities

Creating a Freshman Orientation Program

Our Freshman Orientation Program aims to expose incoming students to the various entrepreneurial and innovation opportunities and resources available to them on Wash U’s campus. Over the past few months, we have uncovered many new resources we never knew existed; the majority of students on campus do not know about these resources, either. We feel that a thorough understanding of what our campus offers is crucial to spurring entrepreneurship and innovation at Wash U. We believe that exposing students to the opportunities available to them and motivating them to innovate will be most effective when they are incoming or new students and have yet to establish themselves on campus. Furthermore, we want to foster collaboration among various different disciplines across the school by bring a diverse array of students in contact with each other.

Specifically, we plan to host many meetings where students can meet each other and network. We also will oversee trips to various innovative and entrepreneurial spaces on Wash U’s campus and in the St. Louis community. Additionally, we will acquaint students with the many entrepreneurial activities and clubs on campus by hosting pitches from various clubs and providing a centralized source of information regarding them.

Tactic	Milestone Date
Create comprehensive plan of activities/dates for program	3/15/15
Meet with and propose ideas to advisors/find venues. Revise the plan if needed.	4/1/15
Find venues and sponsors to host events	4/15/15
Finalize the Program for Launch	7/1/15

Creating a Campus Resources Webportal

After interviewing many faculty and deans around campus, it was clear the awareness of campus resources across different disciplines was severely lacking. Even within each school (engineering, business, etc.) knowledge of prototyping resources such as 3D printers, modeling software, and machine work shops was inconsistent across many students and faculty. To solve this problem, we are envisioning a web portal documenting campus resource such as 3D printers, milling machines, biosafety hoods, etc. For example, a student could query for 3D printers and get several hits in the schools of engineering and art. Each resource will have the contact name of the person managing that resource for student entrepreneurs. 

Tactic	Milestone Date
Propose idea to deans of engineering and entrepreneurship already invested in promoting entrepreneurship. We would determine the logistics of how to create and manage this web portal and next steps.	2/01/15
Meet with WashU's Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and propose the project with backing from administration. We could offer compensatory pay.	3/01/15
Pilot the webportal in the School of Engineering and monitor website traffic and advertise it	4/01/15
Expand the webportal to the Sam Fox School of Art and monitor website traffic	8/01/15
Expand the webportal to the School of Arts and Sciences	10/01/15

Advertising and Generating Traffic at Washington University's Co-Lab

The Washington University Co-Lab is our first incubator space. We now need to advertize this to students, community leaders, local companies, and faculty. By generating high amounts of traffic, student entrepreneurs can request for more institutional support, network with each other, and hopefully generate more entrepreneurial ventures. 

Tactic	Milestone Date
Creating logistics for the Co-Lab ie sign up sheets, informative and attractive website, and begin gathering student participation	02/01/15
Meet with engineering deans, director of the Skandelaris center, and CEP to discuss how the space will be managed and programming	02/07/15
Begin advertizing entrepreneurship programming already planned by the Skandelaris Center	03/01/15
Decorate the Co-Lab to reduce white space and create attractive signs outside	04/01/15
Have a 3 Day Start Up Weekend or Innovation Workshop to officially showcase the Co-Lab to all students	05/01/15

Creating More Opportunities for Students to Investigate the St. Louis Startup Scene

We believe that hands-on learning is crucial to the development of creativity, innovation, and valuable skills in today’s economy. With that in mind, we hope to create either an engineering class or club (whichever is more feasible both the short and long term) that is student guided to teach underclassmen (freshman/sophomores) the basic skills expected of an engineer in the workforce. Many of these foundational skills such as programming, computer aided design, etc. are not taught in detail until the Junior and Senior years. The goal of this course/club would not to replace these upper level classes, but to offer a challenging rudimentary intro for underclassmen. The culmination of this course would be a pairing of engineers to engineering companies.  Each group of students would embark on a semester-long project assigned to them by the startup. Alternatively, the engineering club would work to develop connections with engineering startups and take on projects that would seem to have industrial value. Those that join this club and work on the projects would gain valuable hands-on skills that they can market to companies or innovate with.

Tactic	Milestone Date
Create comprehensive plan of activities/dates for program	3/15/15
Meet with and propose ideas to advisors/find venues	4/1/15
Find venues and sponsors to host events	4/15/15
Finalize program	5/1/15

 Here we need to put 4-5 priorities and our project ideas. 

Huy's Prority to Increase Entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis:

I want to address the “learn” category of Washington University’s landscape canvas. In particular, I want to create a Start-up weekend just for undergraduates to give students the opportunity to explore entrepreneurship and their own ideas. Many undergraduates interested in participating in entrepreneurship are intimidated by more experienced graduate level entrepreneurs or industry veterans. I seek to solve this problem by creating a program similar to the Start-Up studio hosted by James Madison University’s Society of Entrepreneurs. The setup of such a program would involve teams that require representation from all undergraduate schools (ie. business, engineering, arts, and sciences). These teams will work to identify and solve a problem on Washington University’s campus (ie. parking, scheduling classes, housing, etc.) In this way, students can demonstrate/learn interdisciplinary collaboration skills, see a direct impact of their innovation in their daily lives, and become inspired to become more entrepreneurially involved. Judges can be recruited from industry to judge the final product ideas, mentor, or provide seed funding. This can also be a hiring opportunity for students because industry values entrepreneurial/creative thinking. I plant to use our new campus wide incubator space that is open to students of all majors.

Below are my outlined steps to carryout this plan of action: