<span style="color:#000000;">''<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; font-size: larger;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; font-family: georgia, serif;">Engineering Entrepreneur Always Looking up for Inspiration</span></span>''</span>
<br/>[[File:Skender.png|thumb|Skender.png]]
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<br/><span style="color:#000000;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; font-size: small;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4; font-family: verdana, geneva, sans-serif;">'''S<span style="font-size:smaller;">TEPHEN</span> K<span style="font-size:smaller;">ENDER </span>'''</span></span></span><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="color:#000033;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">is a Plastics Engineering student at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and an agent of change in his community</span></span><span style="line-height: 1.4;">. Stephen has kept himself busy during his first year in college. He is a member of the Pre-Law Society's Mock Trial team, has created a giving kindness initiative on his campus, and has won multiple awards at entrepreneurial competitions for his venture, </span></span>[http://impactivesports.com/ <span style="color:#000064;">Impactive Sports</span>]<span style="color:#000033;"><span style="line-height: 1.4;">. An Eagle Scout, he frequently volunteers his time as an "Open Space Steward" in his hometown of Chelmsford, MA, keeping public property in good condition at no cost to the town.</span></span></span>
<span style="font-size:small;"><span style="color:#000033;"><span style="line-height: 1.4;">In his first few years at UMass Lowell, Stephen has made many connections within the university and with industry professionals, and have put a lot of time and effort into being a leader in various entrepreneurship initiatives on campus. Last spring, he introduced Hawkathon, a $25,000 hackathon that was first of its kind at the university, which saw almost 100 students from across the Northeast building incredible innovations in a 24-hour time-span. This year, Hawkathon has partnered with MIT Hacking Medicine and the Massachusetts eHealth Institute to put on a digital health hackathon, and it is expected to be even more impactful to the students, the community, and the digital health industry.</span></span></span>
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<span style="font-size:small;"><span style="color:#000033;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">His experiences inside and outside the classroom have built him into the person he is today, with a heart for innovation and a mind for engineering. He put this enthusiasm into his venture, Impactive Sports, a novel sports equipment project designed to withstand higher impacts and reduce the costs (and risks) of playing sports. In a few months he and his twin sisters raised almost $5,000 from university-sponsored competitions, and they are currently in the process of testing their prototypes.</span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size:small;"><span style="color:#000033;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">He joined the University Innovation Fellows program in fall of 2015. In early June 2016, he helped organize the first-ever student track of the Deshpande Symposium, where a national network of entrepreneurial-minded students and officials gathered to learn about ways to innovate higher education. A week later, he was honored with the opportunity to speak about space design at a workshop at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, where he pitched his research and experiences to 120 people from all over the world. As a representative of UMass Lowell, he hopes to bring back as much as he can in order to spread of design thinking throughout his campus and community.</span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size:small;"><span style="color:#000033;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">In his free time, Stephen likes designing in 2- and 3-dimensions, as well as playing a variety of casual sports. He </span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">enjoys talking your ear off about plastics engineering, days off due to weather, and has recently taken up a telescope hobby to feed his addiction to space </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 1.4; color: rgb(0, 0, 51);">exploration.</span></span>
<span style="font-size:small;">If you would like to contact Stephen, you can reach him via [mailto:stephenkender88@gmail.com e-mail] or [https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenkender LinkedIn].</span>
<span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">'''<span style="font-size:xx-large;"><font color="#000033"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">RELATED LINKS</span></font></span>'''</span>
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[http://www.uml.edu/ <br />UMass Lowell]
[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/University_of_Massachusetts_Lowell UMass Lowell Wiki Page]
[http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/UMass_Lowell_Student_Priorities UMass Lowell Student Priorities Wiki Page]
<blockquote><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-style: italic;">"How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."</span></blockquote><div><br/></div></div>
[[Category:Student Contributors|s]]