Priorities:The Ohio State University Student Priorities

Overview

The Ohio State University offers premier services to pockets of students through organizations such as the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Technology Commercialization Office, and various student organization. However, these are not widely utilized within engineering and business, let alone the rest of the university. The typical student receives little to no of the entrepreneurial and innovation education that prepares them for the modern economy. To extend the long-term I&E Ecosystem at Ohio State; to provide students with resources and environments that facilitate innovation learning; to advise, incubate, and accelerate student generated ideas, the following Student Priorities have been created.

[UIF Initiatives for Ohio State Campus]

Priority 1: Formalizing the Innovation Fellows Program

The first area of focus is to formalize the UIF program at Ohio State. The University had one previous fellow in 2014, Peeyush Shrivastava. However, since then, the program has not garnered continued support. Therefore, in order to ensure continued success, our first priority is to work with faculty and administrators to ensure the university will have a leadership circle per year. 

• Fellows involved: Liyang Feng, Juan Tramontin, George Valcarcel, Kai Vogeler

Milestone 1: Conduct Stakeholder meetings - February 15th, 2018

• Description: On Feburary 15th, the leadership circle will meet with faculty and administrators in order to enducate them about the UIF program and summarize the leadership team's mission and priorities. 

Milestone 2: Define Affiliation with Ohio State University - March, 2018

• Description: The UIF program is primarily student driven. However, it is innately dependent on the university for funding and support. Therefore it is imperative to define how future leadership circles will be chosen and how they will interact with stakeholders. 

Milestone 3: Create Application Process for Spring 2019 Fellow Candidates - May, 2018

• Description: In order to ensure student from any major are able to be part of this program, Ohio State will have a competative application process where a students are chosen to apply to the fellows program. The existing leadership circle and stakeholders will determine an application and evaluation process. 

Milestone 4: Advertise Program and Collect Applications - Summer/Early Fall, 2018

• Description: Through a variety of streams yet to be determined, the Fellows program will be advertised to the student body. 

Milestone 5: Select Leadership Circle assist them application process - Septemer, 2018

• Description: A new leadership circle will be selected to apply to the UIF program. With the help of current fellows and stakeholders the new circle will complete the application to the fellows program.

Priority 2: Expand Innovation and Entrepreneurial Education

Ohio State has a few programs that teach innovative and entrepreneurial methods including the Entrepreneurship and Innovation minor and the Integrated Business and Engineering Honors program. However, these are both multi-year commitments that many students are unwilling to make. In addition to these, we would like to create programming that provides a one semester introduction to concepts such as Lean Startup, Design thinking, and other problem-centric methodologies.

• Fellows involved: Liyang Feng, Juan Tramontin, George Valcarcel, Kai Vogeler

Milestone 1: Landscape existing courses - April 2018

• Description: Before any new curriculum is considered, existing courses are identified and analyzed to determine gaps in access and course content. If possible, changing an existing course would be much easier than developing a new course. 

Milestone 2: Discover Education Methods at other Universities - March, 2018

• Description: Thorugh networking which the Innovation Fellows program gives, the leadership circle will be discovering how other schools approach I&E education in for Engineering, Business, and the general student. 

Milestone 3: Work to Expand Integrated Business and Engineering Curriculum - Spring, 2018

• Description: The Integrated Business and Engineeing program is a select group of Engineering and Business Honors students taking cross-disciplinary courses and design cornerstone and capstone classes. With the KEEN grant Ohio State has recently received, the Engineering Educatiton Department is determining how to expand the curriculum beyond IBE to the entire Fundamentals of Engineering program (first year engineering program). 

Milestone 4: Prototype course open to all students - Fall, 2018

• Description: Through the summer of 2018. the fellows will work with faculty to develop a curriculum that satisfies the needs of students. In the fall, the students will help prototype the course material.

Strategy #3: Accelerated Programs to Encourage Translational Problem Solving

Some innovative research universities like RPI have formed accelerated BS-PhD Programs so as to promote an interdiciplinary set of problem solving skills very early on for their students. This is an initiative that would be incredibly effective at an institution as large as Ohio State, especially if it were tailored to a small program, much like the Biomedical Science Undergraduate Program. This program has a major emphasis on research, and is limited to 25 students per year, enabling longitudinal analysis to be quite pragmatic. An accelerated BS-PhD degree could potentially increase the quantity and quality of innovation being developed by students by providing highly motivated students with the resources, framework, and peer ecosystem necessary to pursue their innovations via research and immersive learning. 

Tactic #1: Accelerated BS-PhD Program incorporated into Undergraduate Biomedical Science

• Description: The prupose of this tactic is to develop a highly strategic relationship between the Undergraduate Biomedical Science Major and the Integrated Biomedical Graduate Program (IBGP) so as to faciliate a means of encouraging student innovation via research and problem solving as early as a student's first year of college. 

• Team Leaders: Peeyush Shrivastava, Dr. Michael Camp, PhD (Fisher College of Business).

• Milestones:
  • Speak to Steven Mousetes and Dr. John Gunn from Undergraduate Biomedical Science Program, and arrange a meeting with the directors of the IBGP. Schedule: Novemeber 2014
  • Identify universities which have adopted such an accelerated program, and identify the successes and tangible impacts on I&E as well as the generic progress of the university in preparation for a series of meetings to address potential adoption. Schedule: December 2014
  • Meet with the decision makers on this front. Schedule: TBD

Tactic #2: Accelerated BS-MS Program for Ohio State University

• Description: Similar to Tactic 1, this would be a method of attaining broader appeal for the university's emphasis on research innovation by creating a generic accelerated BS-MS Program for Ohio State. This would have the same impact as the above tactic, but would involve several different approvals from several different colleges. Dr. Drake seems supportive of this kind of path as it is resemblant of a 21st century emphasis on interdisciplinary team skills. 

• Team Leaders: Peeyush Shrivastava, Dr. Michael Camp, PhD (Fisher College of Business).

• Milestones:
  • Speak to Steven Mousetes and Dr. John Gunn from Undergraduate Biomedical Science Program, and arrange a meeting with the directors of the IBGP. Schedule: Novemeber 2014
  • Identify universities which have adopted such an accelerated program, and identify the successes and tangible impacts on I&E as well as the generic progress of the university in preparation for a series of meetings to address potential adoption. Schedule: December 2014
  • Meet with the decision makers on this front. Schedule: TBD

Related Links

The Ohio State University

Peeyush Shrivastava