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 (IBE) 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 IBE Curriculum - Spring, 2018

• Description: The Integrated Business and Engineeing (IBE) 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.

Priority 3: Create a Network of Innovation Labs

Ohio State is very large university where space for studetns and organizations to collaborate is rather limited. One of the large initiatives we are pushing for are a network of open collaboration spaces, Innovation Labs, across campus. These spaces will be open to student organizations, project groups, and single students and geared towards ideation. These spaces will also be used to run workshops for I&E topics. 

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

Milestone 1: Visit other Universities - March 2018

• Description: The leadership circle will be visiting other Universities to discover how they make spaces available to students and how they are set up to help student groups be successful. 

Milestone 2: Transform IBE Capstone Lab - Summer 2018

• Description: The fellowship circle will be proposing changes to the existing Integrated Business and Engineering Capstone lab, a space available to student groups, to be more open and collaborative. The space will use design to enhance the effectiveness of student groups working in the space.  

Milestone 3: Identify Additional spaces on Campus - March, 2018

• Description: The fellows will be working with departments to identify open spaces on campus that can be transformed.  

Milestone 4: Serve as a Student Voice in Planning of Energy Innovation Center - Spring, 2018

• Description: Ohio State University recently granted Engie, a french energy company, the energy production rights for the next 50 years. As part of the partnership, Engie has earmarked $50 million towards the creation of an Energy Innovation Center. The leadership circle, along with other students will play an integral part in defining the needs of students and assisting in making spaces accessible for students.  

Priority 4: Support Buckeye Entrepreneurs

Columbus has a burgeoning entrepreneurial ecosystem. However, this ecosystem has difficulty extending to campus. One of the priorities the fellows will be leading is to enhance the quantitiy and availability of mentorship, funding, and accelerators.

• Fellows involved: Liyang Feng, George Valcarcel

Milestone 1: Ohio State Startup Day - April 14th, 2018

• Description: In April, multiple Ohio State and Columbus startups will be attending a networking and speaker event on Ohio State's campus in order to encourage students to get involved.

Related Links

The Ohio State University

2014 Fellows:

• Peeyush Shrivastava

2018 Fellows: 

• Liyang Feng
• Juan Tramontin
• George Valcarcel
• Kai Vogeler