Priorities:Wichita State University Student Priorities

Wichita State University

Strategy 1: Alter the campus culture through curriculum

Project Lead: Kevin Kraus

Tactic #1: Introduce students to design courses early on.

Selected Topics in Design is an aerospace engineering course that offers sophomore and junior honors students the opportunity to work side-by-side with the aerospace engineering students enrolled in their senior design course.  Creating parallel courses in the other engineering departments would help form a foundation in design earlier on in a student’s academic career.

• Speak with faculty of senior design courses to gauge feasibility 
• Discuss the option of these courses fulfilling Engineer of 2020 requirement 
• Create first revision of curriculum 
• Begin offering these courses

Tactic #2: Offer interdisciplinary design courses.

Interdisciplinary work allows students the opportunity to gain new perspectives of how their majors interact with other majors in the business world.  A design course that involved business and engineering majors and emphasized product lifecycle management would expose the students to different mindsets and a more holistic understanding of how an idea or solution is created out of an initial design and eventually marketed.  This course could also facilitate community business partners that offer real world problems for the students to undertake as their design project.

• Find a faculty member interested in teaching the course (11-6-15)
• Determine if this course could satisfy senior design requirements (12-4-15)
• Identify community businesses interested in a partnership (12-4-15)
• Create first revision of curriculum (1-15-16)
• Begin offering the course (Fall 2016)

Strategy 2: Shocker Start Up, a student organization to promote entrepreneurship across the campus and community

Project Lead: Hannah Hund

Tactic #1: Connect ICT

Students want to collaborate on projects with people from different disciplines, but do not have a venue to interact with students from other programs or interested community members. Connect ICT is a networking event hosted by Shocker Startup designed to create meaningful collisions between students from different disciplines and the community. Students will share their project idea to a student and community member audience stating what they want to do and what they need to accomplish their goals. Members of the audience with a different backgrounds and access to resources are encouraged to approach presenting students and form teams or partnerships.

Tactic #2: Shocker Startup Impact

The Impact Speaker Series will host speakers that provide information and inspiration to encourage entrepreneurship in the student population and Wichita community. This event will contribute to the living learning community at Wichita State.

Tactic #3: Pitch and Presentation Competitions

Shocker Startup will host pitch and presentation competitions to give students the experience and practice they need to create startups.  Encouraging community members and industry to be judges will help to further bind the relationship between Wichita State students and the community.

Strategy 3: Develop legal competency and security for designers and creatives.

Project Lead: Wesley Alexis
Tactic 1: Offer courses on patent law.

• Assess student need by survey.                                                                    
• Assess and constructively critique current IP and  legal services at WSU
• Find faculty and department interested in teaching.                                     
• Use student, faculty, and legal feedback to develop the curriculum.                        
• Offer the course.                                                                                            

 Tactic 2: Employ external legal counsel

• Compile a list of law firms not on retainer to WSU.                                       
• Of these firms, seek either probono or funding for a legal counsel.             
• Establish a connection for direct designer/creative-legal counsel.                

 Tactic 3: Offer legal workshops for young entrepreneurs, designers, and creatives.

• Contact Business Booster & Tech Transfer’s directors.                               
• Analyze “customer” perspective and surveys.                                                         
• Develop engaging and informative workshops.                                            
• Offer workshops.

Strategy 4: Innovation Central Network

Project Lead: Austin Crane

 Connecting students with students or students with resources is the biggest problem with starting a startup at a university, the solution is to create an online environment of like minded students with other students and the universities resources. Students value their time more than they value anything and creating an online environment that they can search and post their needs will help save them time and give them multiple options to choose from.

 

Short term tactics:

• poll students and see what the need is for resources and founding members
• poll current startups from the community that have found success and failure and see what could have helped them in the early stage of their startup
• create a minimum viable product with a local startup

Long term tactics:

• look at marketing to a global audience
• implement it in other universities
• create an app?
• create a network within ACE or other organizations

Strategy 5: Improve and Initiate New Avenues of Inspiration and Innovation

Project Lead – Saad Syed 

To inspire students with new ideas is a challenge that will always be ever evolving. At the same time there will always be resources available to organizations to help spark inspiration and innovation. We have identified one such event to be as evolving as the challenge itself. We believe starting a tradition of hosting a TedX event every year for all students will help create that culture of inspiration and innovation.

Short Term Tactics to Implement Strategy

-          Interview students of all discipline to gather data on ideas and topics for TedX event.

-          Research logistics of hosting TedX and similar events.

-          Engage administration to help facilitate event.

Long Term Tactics to Implement Strategy

-          Develop a plan for future fellows to take ownership of organizing and hosting event each year.

-          Develop plan to host smaller similar inspiration events throughout school year.