School:Colorado School of Mines

The Colorado School of Mines is a public research university of engineering and applied science in Golden, Colorado. 

Promoting student innovation and entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship Club (E-Club)

In the Spring 2014 semester, the Entrepreneurship Club at mines was restarted to become an active campus organization that has brought in local entrepreneurs to talk about their experiences. The club will organize several campus wide events in the coming academic year to increase awareness and exposure to innovation and entrepreneurship.

Website is under development.

Design Lab

The Director of Senior Design for Mechanical Engineering, Jered Dean, has taken steps to transform the mechanical engineering senior design lab into an open design lab that allows students to use equipment for any academic or personal project. The lab consists of 6 new makerbot 3D printers along with other prototyping equipment in the basement of Brown Hall. 

Startup Summer

Employers participating in Startup Summer have come to Mines to promote the program where students interested in startups can have a paid internship and gain valuable insight into innovation and entrepreneurship. This program has been a pathway for post graduation employment for several Mines graduates.

Encouraging faculty innovation and entrepreneurship 

Pathway to Innovation Leadership Team

Overall, encouraging faculty innovation and entrepreneurship has become a focus here at Mines. The Pathway to Innovation Leadership Team is a group of faculty members focused on promoting innovation and entrepreneurship amidst the student body.

• The Pathways to Innovation Leadership Team partnered with the University Innovation Fellows to put on the first Inovation Competition for students at Mines.
• The team has connections to other faculty members with experience in business and entrepreneurship. These faculty members have expressed interest in showcasing their experiences and running workshops around innovation and entrepreneurship.

Resources for Midea

Faculty members have helped develop resources for the Midea Hub (online tool used by students looking for resources while in different stages of the innovation or entrepreneurship process). These faculty members range in expertise from design thinking to policy and paperwork regarding patents.

Building Relationships with Faculty Members

The Colorado School of Mines UIF Leadership circle focuses on building professional and personal relationships with faculty in order to encourage faculty innovation and rally support for the concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship. 

Actively supporting the university technology transfer function

The office of technology transfer (OTT) has primarily been used to commercialize PhD research.

OTT has provided an extensive list of regional and national resources that might be of use for students interested in innovation and entrepreneurship.

In addition to the above resources, Mines has recently put together a new website named Midea that contains resources both on campus and on the web.  The vision for this website is to be a hub for all student innovation and entrepreneurial activities where students can see projects other students have put together, find inspiration, or seek help from other students or faculty.  This site is still in its beginning stages and many of its pages do not yet have any information on them, but this will be changing over the next several weeks as information is continually being added.  

Facilitating University-Industry Collaboration

Current collaboration exists between research groups and industry. These collaborations are primarily used to fund graduate students and do not promote innovation/entrepreneurship.

Related Links

Colorado School of Mines

Colorado School of mines Student Priorites

University Innovation Fellows

Spring 2016:

Mallory Britz

Daniel Dickason

Trevor Clevenger

Tara Maestas

Asya Sergoyan

Nicholas Yuan

Spring 2014:

Corey Brugh