Priorities:Stony Brook University Student Priorities

The Blueprint

Action A: Engaging Current Student Entrepreneurship

Approach#1: Design Competition: The Catalyst Challenge

Milestones:

Primary Champion: Saba Khalid

Action B: Facilitating Faculty-Student Interaction and Partnerships

Approach#1: CEAS Town Hall Meetings

Milestones:

Primary Champion: Saba Khalid

Action C: Increasing Collaboration within Different Disciplines

Approach#1: 

Milestones:

Primary Champion: 

There are many projects that need to be implemented at Stony Brook University in order for the push towards entrepreneurship and innovation to occur. There have been some lone initiatives that have taken place which have seeked to inspire students to create and apply their design capabilities, though they have only been able to attract a small range of students. The goal of the campus is to become more of a collaborative community that nurtures students and assists in developing their abilities to create new products and resources. The primary mission of any academic institution is to allow students to expand their talents and to provide them with the resources they need to succeed. Having a cache of resources available to students but as well as creating a community that fosters collaboration allows students to not only interact with students of different disciplines but also opens up the resources that they would not have normally sought out.

The current UIF Fellow, Saba_Khalid, is looking to develop the foundations for such a community by creating key partnerships with departments all across campus. One of the primary interests is to sign on the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) as leaders in pushing forward to provide students with opportunities to design products and collaborate with other departments across campus. Moreover, the fellow is looking to hold a Town Hall style meeting with CEAS leaders and its students once a semester so that students can identify what resources they want from CEAS to be available to them on campus. More so, this will also give CEAS and Stony Brook University a better idea of what students are seeking to learn and tailor their academic offerings accordingly.

Furthermore, to promote an atmosphere that cultivates innovation, the fellow is planning on launching a design competition, known as the Catalyst Challenge. The Challenge will require that teams of students be composed of at least one engineering and one business students, with a maximum of 5 members. It will be modeled after the 3-day startup and the Techcrunch Disrupt Challenge; the challenge will take place over the course of a weekend. Students will be required to submit an initial proposal of what they are seeking to build and design, understanding that they would have to achieve it in the course of 48 hours. Based on their proposals, about 10 ideas will be selected by the organizers and invited to participate in the challenge. Throughout the course of the weekend, teams will design and present their product to a panel of investors and company representatives on why their idea is worthy of investment. The panel will judge each team and give them ratings based on whether or not their idea is innovative and if their team has a strong business plan. The team with the highest rating will be given prize money for their idea and will have a member present their idea at TedXSBU. This challenge will allow students to not only network with each other but create vital industry partnerships they normally would not have been given the opportunity to do so. This project is highly doable, though it heavily requires the support of the institution.

Related Links

Stony Brook University Campus Overview

Stony Brook University Official Website

Stony Brook University Innovation Lab

University Innovation Fellow: [http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Saba_Khalid Saba Khalid