Priorities:University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez Student Priorities

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Promoting student innovation and entrepreneurship 

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In the university of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez Campus the effort of promoting student innovation and entrepreneurship is seen through the initiatives taken by campus students.

Idea Platform andTedx UPRM

One of initiatives was to create the first passion driven student organization called Idea Platform.This organization provides a support network for passionate innovators. In operation, Idea Platform is a group of creative minds working through challenges to achieve the implementation of meaningful projects in the university campus. One of Idea Platform staggering projects is to create the first TEDx Event on the Mayaguez Campus. This event was brought under the intentions of providing a platform for students to share their ideas with the world.  

ACM

ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),  an organization whose main purpose is to develop students outside the curricular parameter, give the students challenging experiences that enrich the technical and professional skills of all its members. ACM has 4 chapters: Engineering, Computer Science, Business Administration and Women. These chapters together will host the first serie of technical events with spearkers and hands on workshops.

APE

APE( Association of Programmers and Entrepreneurs) is a recently new organization whose goal is to help develop the new generation of programmers and entrepreneurs. APE firmly believes that through social experiences people and ideas develop much more organically instead of being an isolated experience. They developed a space called Hacker Socials in which students come together to program, socialize and create new things. They currently got Microsoft PR to help them in the endeavours of creating new software entrepreneurs.

Encouraging faculty innovation and entrepreneurship

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The Chancellor of our University has stated multiple times that “I&E is one of his most important priorities on campus”. However, changing decades of institutional culture is not something that happens in a year. Institutional policies sometimes impede faculty innovation and entrepreneurship through research. An example of these policies are that if a professor chooses to give a selected number of hours of class, say 12hrs a week, institutional policies don’t encourage him to do research. Likewise, those professors that do develop research possess the entrepreneurship mindset in the sense that they search for funding outside the university, but whether they spin-out and commercialize their projects is still in construction. In the other hand, some professors are not aware of the commercialization potential of their projects because they have not been exposed enough to know the indicated processes. In order to change the impact that the disorientation can cause, preparation and training for professors that have research projects in every faculty should be a high priority.

Despite the challenges, the University of Puerto Rico- Mayaguez has a group of champions in the faculty that keeps growing. This group has been submitting proposals for courses, programs, researches, among other successful initiatives that promote I&E. This group is the spark that will illuminate other professors and administrators to keep the momentum.

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Facilitating University-Industry Collaboration

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Only recently has our university started to open their arms to the concept of a University-Industry relationship. Our school is a public institution in which the bureaucracy of the government is also transferred into our world. This level of bureaucracy has slowed things down to a point that we need to carefully plan everything so that it can progress with a positive outcome. We are currently developing programs in which students get the resources need to provide students the resources required to take their ideas into the industry. With the help of local incubator Vitec, the UPRM E-ship Network and our makerspace movement we hope to achieve what has been very difficult to do in our university. The relationship between the academia and the private sector.

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Related links

Lanscape Canvas

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jWlK1PcUAl7fPDMfE_nJeNC5DQ7uiFKEhb78iJB5lqA/edit?usp=sharing

Business Model Canvas: Tex UPRM

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1pRWIHdBWy3Xrll...

Business Model Canvas: Computing Day with ACMs

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1ANCUPlQMtqm3M1...

Business Model Canvas: Innovation Space

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pRclhodnns6RuEiW...

Business Model Canvas: E-Ship

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1eOJ-kKv55B0BDdMtOm6jOyA5B-EvKvT-hl_ude9H7Fc/edit