Changes

The University of New Hampshire is one of only 17 institutions in the nation designated as a land, sea, and space grant. As a premier research institution, UNH is home to a wide array of high quality faculty of diverse fields of study who share an interest in tackling the grand challenges of the day. The focus on inspiring and transforming students, especially through enriching programs of study with hands-on research experiences provides an excellent platform for students the engage in innovation and entrepreneurship. The newly formed ECenter (entrepreneurship center) was created to fill some of the final gaps in the I&E ecosystem by creating a centralized, college agnostic, integrated solution, it’s even equipped with a student-run makerspace. One challenge before us is that students, for the most part, have not discovered how or why I&E is important to them. They have not discovered that they are the change agents the world needs, and that they have the power to help address some of the most grandiose challenges of the day. The second challenge to the UNH I&E landscape is that if you doubled UNH’s legislative support tomorrow, we would still be the least state funded public school in the nation; receiving about 10% of the annual budget from the state compared a national average of around 50%.

It is a really exciting time to be at UNH and have the chance to bear witness to the sweeping positive changes underway. That is not to say we are without challenges. We need to encourage more students to think about taking on the grand challenges of the day, create in roads between the silos that arise out of differences in fields of specialization by promoting interdisciplinary interactions, and create a shared mechanism to introduce students in all discipline to innovation and entrepreneurship to teach entrepreneurship as a mindset to form a common basis as they go on to learn specialized skills. Finally, we need to find a source of funding to support these new initiatives and grow those already in place.