Priorities:Universidad de los Andes Student Priorities

Project Pitch Video 2017

[Video coming soon]

Strategy #1: Augment the proactive participation of students in I&E events.

Develop better communication channels, adjusted to the demographics.

We believe that many students do not participate in I&E-related events because they are not aware of the existence of many of these activities and the benefits that students might derive from them. By adjusting the communication channels –which at the time have proven to be ineffective and to have little scope– students might come into contact with most of these events first-handedly. We will achieve this by leaving behind traditional and outdated methods of communication (like written notices and printed out info on bulletin boards), and switch to targeted advertisements on social networks, and catered messages.

Tactics + Milestones:

1. Involve students of all departments, not just those familiar with I&E events, workshops and tools.
2. Develop an active social media management.
3. Create a mailbox to receive project information, feedback and opportunities from students.
4. Generate alliances with managers of department newspapers and magazines.
5. Develop peer to peer methodologies to encourage students to share their projects.

Have teachers provide 5 minutes of class time to promote events that have certain affinity with the course.

The main objective is to involve teachers in I&E projects, to try and give them an active role in innovation. We will send them the information of the I&E events related with the course topics and have them to encourage students to participate in those events.

Tactics + Milestones:

1. Create a plan to involve students of many departments.
2. Instruct teachers in how they would be making an impact by playing an active role in I&E.
3. Provide monthly information updates on the events that will be coming up.
4. Open direct communication channels with teachers.

Involve innovation activities with course activities.

The university innovation dependencies provide multiple resources to develop student led innovation projects; especially those developed in the classroom. We will establish alliances with these dependencies and the courses that deal with I&E directly to develop projects hand in hand.

Tactics + Milestones:

1. Develop a model to have university innovation dependencies (UID) promote course projects.
2. Encourage the faculty to work with UID, by emphasizing on the enormous impact that this will have on student projects.
3. Share success stories on university media.

Website of rewards and challenges

We will develop a collaborative website where students can find the I&E recent projects developed in the university, as well as projects under development. Including a "hall of fame" of the most interesting projects, as voted by their peers. Students will also be able to post further challenges and problems to be solved. Other students –and themselves– they could find teammates based on similar interests and characteristics that compliment each other.

Tactics + Milestones:

1. Development the online portal.
2. Generate an active launch campaign on social media.
3. Start promoting student’s projects to have the student community develop an interest in this new source of inspiration.
4. Find resources for student’s projects.

Strategy #2: Help students become aware of the I&E opportunities, events and programs available to them.

Create a platform to connect student’s interests with I&E offers

Create a website/app that offers students I&E related resources (be it a workshop, a conference, or any other sort of event) based on their own particular preferences.

Tactics + Milestones:

1. Empathize with students to understand what other services that the app could offer are important to them.
2. Create a way to have students showcase their own projects within the app. This could be in the form of a gallery, or the possibility to create their own events and list them with the other I&E offers.
3. Develop a database with all the different events related to I&E across campus.
4. Develop the website and mobile app.  

Introduce students to the formal and informal initiatives involving development as an entrepreneur.

An interactive blog, that has a printed version in the form of a magazine or catalog, that helps students track the different activities that are going on around campus. This could also be a space where the Innovator of the Month, so to speak, is presented alongside their work.

Tactics + Milestones:

1. Encourage students to be a part of the initiatives in their spare time.
2. Develop a system of positive incentives that can catalyzes the formal learning of students in the classroom. Bonuses for attending specific initiatives that are related to the subject of study.
3. Search the community for entrepreneurs to present in the blog, before it is renowned enough that students are the ones who go in the search of the blog manager to have their work published.
4. Develop the blog. 

Faculty I&E Summits

At Los Andes, virtually every course that incorporates I&E into the formal learning curriculum is either of the Business, Design or Engineering department. We wish to tackle this problem by creating teacher-led “I&E Summits”, where the teachers can share their experience to point other teachers from other departments/schools in the right direction to adequate I&E into their curriculums.

Tactics + Milestones:

1. “First Steps into I&E” Guides created by the Business Design and Engineering departments.
2. Develop I&E handbooks, providing clear instructions and key pointers to incorporate I&E into the classroom.
3. Create an inter-Disciplinary Student Innovation Council so the weaving of I&E into curriculums can be blended into student life seamlessly. Students could hold I&E Sessions themselves, to remind students the importance of I&E so they too can help accept other departments instructing them I&E related topics.
4. Ask all departments and the Dean of Students to spread the information to all students and faculty members.
5. Encourage both students and faculty to try to grasp a deeper understanding of all the benefits that can be derived from using I&E.
6. Showcase alumni’s work in I&E to get students from all majors motivated and in sync with entrepreneurship and innovation.

Centralize all I&E opportunities and offers in the same place within the university.

A big problem for students when looking to get a grasp of Innovation and Entreprenurship is that Los Andes is quite a bureaucratic institution; this means that every particular issue needs to be taken to a particular dependency…the problem with I&E is that all the resources are not necessarily located in the same building nor even close to each other. Hence, we would like to unify I&E in a single space (be it a building or a new dependency that handles all I&E procedures, raging from providing information about events to actually carrying them out).

Tactics + Milestones:

1. Present the idea to the Entrepreneurship center, emphasizing that the building they are located in is the top choice to create the I&E hub.
2. Develop a daily basis plan: after all this is a place where students know they can always find information and personal aid regarding entrepreneurial processes.
3. Provide easy access to mentoring,
4. Develop activities that help provide access to networking
5. Create events that favor easy team building.