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[[File:KC.png|thumb|Kathryn Christopher, Grand Valley State UniversityKC.png]]

Kathryn Christopher'''Fellow Since''': Fall 2014<br/>'''School''': Grand Valley State UniveristyUniversity<br/>UIF Fall 2014'''Interests''': Student experience design, curriculum development and design, business service design, innovation, product design, medical device design, entrepreneurship, engineering, and materials science.

Kathryn ChristopherKC has worked on a variety of things at GVSU since becoming a fellow there in 2014. In her first year, she started an innovation club that eventually morphed into the design thinking club at GVSU. During her junior year, or KC started a medical device company, obtaining a patent, completeing the I-Corps Program, and presenting in Open Minds. eventually however, that company failed, and since then she has helped contract at several other startups. Some of her experience includes freelancing as most an experience designer at Thoughtfull Studios ([https://www.thoughtfulldesign.com/ https://www.thoughtfulldesign.com/]) and&nbsp;helping to lauch a successful kickstarter campaign for MOBI ([https://trainoutpainperformance.com/products/mobi).&nbsp https://trainoutpainperformance.com/products/mobi]/)&nbsp; As a fellow, KC worked on a variety of things, but her friends call largest success story was changing the freshman engineering curriculum to include innovation, entrepreneruial thinking, and design thinking. Now every student at Grand Valley will be exposed to project-based learning using the design thinking process in their first year. She is studying the effect of this change on student outcomes and is hoping to write about using design thinking in enginering pedagogy eventually. KC is now an advisor for the current fellows at herschool and is in charge of recruiting and managing the applications with the faculty chamption, Dr. Paul Lane. While it might seem like a small task for some schools, is another one of KC's largest accomplishments as a fellow was simply finding a senior Product Design sustainable funding source and Manufacturing Engineering major at home for the fellows program within Grand Valley State Universtiy .&nbsp; In the past two years, KC has begun to expand some of her work interationally, and frequently travels to Nicaragua to promote innovation, practice empathy, and run workshops at the largest national univeristy, UNAN-Managua. In Fall of 2017, KC helped to expand the fellows program to UNAN as the first central american university in the program. Additionally, this experience has allowed KC the opportunity to be a part of a group of faculty at Grand RapidsValley focused on providing mentoring, advice, Michiganand design thinking workshops to students and faculty accross campus.&nbsp; [Updated June 2018] [[Grand Valley State University|Grand_Valley_State_University]] [[GVSU Student Priorities|GVSU_Student_Priorities]] [intro video coming soon!] [[Category:Student Contributors|k]][[Category:Student Contributors]]