Priorities:University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez Student Priorities

Overview:

In the year 2015, six students from the UPRM were chosen to become University Innovation Fellows. Together, they composed the first generation of Mayaguez Fellows. In 2017, a new generation rose. Facing all the hardships that the year 2017 brought upon them, they did not give up on their quest of becoming agents of change. No Huelga or Huracan stopped them, and together they worked on projects they knew would not only help thier university rise up again, but also their Puerto Rico.

Student Projects:

Alex Herrero- Visionary

Visionary is the Virtual Reality technology learning program at UPRM which aims to introduce students to VR/AR/MR and other immersive media technology and enable them to develop their own projects and startups.  It was founded a year ago by Alex after he incubated the idea at Idea Platform (IP). With the help of IP, Alex pitched Visionary at Facebook reperesentatives, which in turn got him in contact with Oculus. Oculus provided Visionary with 2 Oculus Rift VR headsets and $5,000 to use to buy the hardware needed to run them. Visionary started strong, but soon the year 2017 happened. After a series of strikes and hurricanes, Visionary is starting up again.

Alex's goal is for Visionary to become a self-sufficient tribe of Idea Platform so that even when he leaves UPRM, Visionary may continue to run. To do this, the Fellow has put together a motivated team of enablers and is working alongside other established tribes of IP so that Visionary is able to lift off. In order to do this a base curriculum will be established as well as a VR license or certificate which will allow the student participating in the program to use the computers and headsets at their own time. To obtain the certificate the participant must demostrate adequate capability to work with virtual reality software and hardware. During the first half of the semester, the participant will be enabled to use the software and hardware through workshops lead by the Visionary team. For the second part of the semester, the participants will be empowered to define their own project, create a team, and implement it. They would present it to the IP and external community as if it were a pitch, where their projects could be considered as the first step towards starting a startup. Visionary is meant to be a fun way to learn a new technology, not a class, so along the semester there will be various activities that will keep it interesting, such as challenges, hackathons, guest speakers, game nights and much more. 

Visionary is important to Mayaguez and Puerto Rico because it is not afraid to work with and empower others with brand new technologies. Visionary hosted the first ever VR Hackathon in Puerto Rico causing a huge wave that was felt across the island. People that had never coded or touched a VR headset were able to create a VR experiece in less than 12 hours. VR/AR/MR are very versatile tools that have an overwhelming amount of applications. To take advantage of the technology and ride the wave, one must be Visionary!

Jaran Arroyo- Elicit

When you hear the word Elicit, you get all those neurons in your brain activated, you get a jolt of energy, even of inspiration. Feeling all those things from a single word. The creativity that emerges from the word “Elicit” entices even the ones that argue to be the least creative. For me Elicit should mean everything, it should be the beginning and the end. It should be the start and finish. Everything, is an understatement for the principles I want to establish.

 

A little history about Elicit, it all starts from the inception of the revolutionary student organization Idea Platform, (a product from a UIF Fellow) Elicit was the first tribe ever founded. It was the melting pot of everything revolutionary at the moment on campus. That grew into becoming the biggest tribe of the organization, with skills ranging from storytelling and filmmaking to coding and writing. Our people were the most diverse of them all. We had students from every single faculty on campus, it was fantastic. Fast tracking to the present, we’re currently pivoting our mission and vision. I feel that Elicit has lost the spark that once influenced. Jaran’s mission, my mission is to acquire as much knowledge from the UIF Network so I can inject that passion and enthusiasm again.

 

My mission as a Fellow is to find the tools needed for me to develop the best place for interdisciplinary students to be. I want to create a place where engineers can work on art, business people make things from scratch and science people could develop their artistic abilities. We are in 2018, the time for humans to have just one interest, is a thing of the past. This new dawn of hybrid disciplines is what has brought arguably, the best and brightest innovations this world has ever seen. Steve Jobs is just an example of the hundreds from these hybrids, him personally mixing Electrical Engineering with Marketing and Design, allowed the creation of arguably the biggest and most consumer innovative company, ever. Elicit should be our campus’ most innovative place with the most diverse people. I am determined to make this ideal happen. 

Related links:

Lanscape Canvas 2017

Lanscape Canvas 2015

Business Model Canvas: TEDx 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

Business Model Canvas: Startup Lab

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1J3FBn41mJzG9SNQFYhQ1i-cprT86qXlwlbYpPMOqvv4/edit?usp=sharing

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