School:George Fox University

Overview

George Fox University has a community that is ready to encourage an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset. Unfortunately, much of the infrastructure to allow students, faculty, and community members to explore their ideas does not yet exist.

Promoting student innovation and entrepreneurship

George Fox University promotes many opportunites for students to discover innovation and entrepreneurship. This is mainly done through classes that encourage innovative thinking through projects. These are classes like Engineering Principles, which is two parts, each part consisting of a end of semester project with an open ended way to solve a problem; and Microprocessors, where students are allowed to design a completely custom circuit board that does whatever they want as long as they meet a few requirements.  In the business department, George Fox has it's own entrepreneurship major program, and attempts to be as close to real busniess settings as possible. In a managerial accounting class student's have to create their own hypothetical resturant and present financial projections. In a marketing class, students are currently working with an outside insurance agency to apply what they've learned in market research. All around the business and engineering departments George Fox University has the abilty to promote innovation and entrepreneurship  through their many communication channels. 

Encouraging faculty innovation and entrepreneurship

George Fox faculty do not conduct as much research as most universities because George Fox encourages its faculty to focus on students and on teaching effectively. In order to advance at George Fox as a faculty member, you need to show quality teaching and some form of continuing scholarship, where scholarship is an article in a peer-reviewed journal or at a conference.  In general, George Fox does not promote faculty innovation and entrepreneurship independent from publishing in a peer-reviewed journal.  That said, the College of Engineering does provide support to do any innovation, but there is still a need to tie it to publishing in order to advance as a faculty member.

Actively supporting the university technology transfer function

Unfortunately, George Fox University has no technology transfer office or any means of aiding students in connecting with industry to share new ideas. 

Facilitating University-Industry Collaboration

Regarding university-industry collaboration, many connections exist for George Fox University. Several industries are on advisory boards and regularly attend career fairs. These are businesses like A-dec, Legacy Health, and Nike, to name a few. The engineering program also has close relations with industry through Senior Design projects where senior engineers design a product to be used in industry.

Engaging with regional and local economic development efforts

Despite our close ties with local industries, George Fox University makes a minimal effort to benefit the community economically. At the beginning of the year, students receive a 'coupon card' with various discounts that students can use at local shops and restaurants, but the focus of this is to plug students into the community, and not necessarily to benefit the local economic development efforts. 

The Landscape Canvas 

Landscape Canvas Spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SoSWsbduc8VI0wryYsq4mbaLvyNYSo_S3NxxCJSOWek/edit?usp=sharing

Landscape Canvas Slidedeck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1K62eRnedlxEh6eeS__JK5NUa6Yp6vsluTQeqqi2KP4o/edit?usp=sharing

Related Links

George Fox University

George Fox University Student Priorities

University Innovation Fellows

Fall 2016:

Kelsey Dody

Caleb Hubbell

Ethan Moss

Codi Morton

Fall 2015:

Bryan Neufeld

Keiko Fujii

Dieter Mueller

Drew Camp

Michael McCleskey