Priorities:University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Student Priorities

Overview

At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, we have what is known as the “Innovation Engine” this is the sum of the widespread opportunities for students to get involved in academic research, pursue business ideas, participate in entrepreneurial courses, enter business competitions, or simply get involved with an innovative student organization. This Innovation Engine is the ambitious goal of our campus Leadership who are creating an Innovation Campus and building new spaces for interdisciplinary collaborative research with many partners in the Milwaukee areas. When looking at our landscape canvas there are a great deal of opportunities that exist for students. However, in the past weeks to months, we have been able to really take a pulse of the campus and examine if the students are really being engaged. This seems to be the case for few, but far more students do not know about the resources available to them and far more students do not execute their ideas. There is a sense of close mindedness, fear, and perceived lack of support that needs to be addressed. Students need to be excited and given a chance to truly let their creative juices and passions pour into an idea free of judgement, where they can take on the risks and pursue new opportunities. We want students to dare to be different and think not about simply getting a job, but creating a job. We need to ignite a new fresh more exciting and exhilarating innovation engine that does not focus exclusively on the academic research but also in the personal pursuits of students. We need to inspired students and make them believe that they too can change the world. For these reasons the following six strategies are designed to maximize the hidden potential that lies within the student body and the faculty and administrators that teach students each and everyday. The resources on campus are there, but they need to be reorganized and they need to be given a context for those who are outside of the compartmentalized and easily isolated groups and colleges. There are 14 schools and colleges at UWM with nearly 30,000 students and over 1,600 faculty, so it is easy for resources and programs to get lost in the shuffle and as a result of the scale of UWM our current I&E ecosystem is quite fragments, with no clear pathways for progress. These six strategies aim to solve many of these problems that plague the campus and ultimately deter some students from pursuing their ideas. Our goal is that with these strategies in place our university can have a centralized I&E ecosystem that has a low barrier to entry; easily identifiable and transparent pathways for resource sharing; and ability to cultivate, nurture and expose ideas. We want to reward students for their participation in the I&E ecosystem and we want to other students to feel like they want to be apart of the I&E ecosystem.

Strategy #1: Introduce I&E on Campus

Tactic #1: TEDx UW-Milwaukee

• Description:

Theme: Generation Why Not?
Scheduled for Oct. 4, 2014

The TEDx UW-Milwaukee event will introduce students and faculty to the growing ecosystem of I&E on our campus promoting ideals of “Moonshot thinking.” We hope to promote the vision and presence of the University Innovation Fellow candidates on our campus as well as the stories of innovative individuals or groups from our area. The goal is to plant the seed for a new way of thinking on our campus with a physical presence and throughout the world with a quality broadcast and recorded program of the event.

• Team Leaders: Jon Edquist, Aaron Davis, Carlton Reeves, Alex Francis, Rob Salamon, et. al.

• Milestones:
  • Find influential headlining speaker: April 22nd, 2014
  • Compile a list of potential speakers: April 22nd, 2014
  • Finalize speaker line-up: May 22nd, 2014
  • Setup and Dry-run through logistics: starting Sept. 22nd,2014

Tactic #2: 3 Day Startup

• Description:

3DS Springboard event details
Scheduled for April 13-19, 2014

UW-Milwaukee is very excited to participate in the first 3 Day Startup Springboard event. This event will promote student ideas and quickly guide them to a finalized pitch. We see the 3DS Springboard event as a learning experience to sponsor future events with the same mission: provide students with moonshot ideas, allow them to quickly form a team, work as a team to solve real problems.

• Team Leaders: Alex Francis

• Milestones:
  • With little time to market the event, we will need to think of creative ways to get students involved: April 6th, 2014
  • Market, Market, Market - conduct marketing campaign: April 6th-13th, 2014
  • Reserve space for the event: April 7th, 2014
  • Furnish space for innovative thinking: April 13th, 2014
  • Plan annual idea hackathon events: 5/1/14
  • Announce the next event!: 8/1/14 (Prior to the Fall semester starting)

Tactic #3: Showoff current and past student accomplishments

• Description:

What better way to raise the confidence of our students by showing success from peers. Highlights of current and past students who have been involved with I&E events or even who have been successful with ventures of their own will be published.

• Team Leaders: Tyra Mcfarland with support from the UWM Research Foundation

• Milestones:
  • Create an I&E showcase section of the school paper.
  • Develop a UW-Milwaukee I&E website focused on aggregating information from all colleges about I&E events, competitions and successes.

Strategy #2: Engagement: Fun Collaborative Idea Creation Sessions

Tactic #1: Brainstorming Sessions

• Description: Hold weekly sessions where students can work on brainstorming ideas, flushing out idea, improving ideas, or simply molding ideas. These sessions will have themes but they will change with demand, but they can range from prototype creation to market research techniques. This is an extension of the current Entrepreneur Meetup Sessions which occur twice a week except now we will focus on idea creation and low resolution prototyping for one session each week. The sessions will be designed for collaboration, high engagement, and a lot of activity.
• Team Leaders: Carlton Reeves
• Milestones:
  • Reserve a space.
  • Send weekly announcements.

Tactic #2: Entrepreneur Mashup Sessions

• Description: Entrepreneur Mashup Sessions, where student entrepreneurs can meet, share their experiences, ideas, problems, and insights with others. Students teaching students how to be more effective in their pursuits.
• Team Leaders: CEO, SESO and collaborating student organizations.
• Milestones:

Strategy #3: UWM Creative Commons: A place to inspire, create, and manifest dreams

This Maker-space type common area is for students to work on their own ideas or collaborate with others. As University Innovation Fellow candidates, we will play a key role in finding a space, furnishing the space with creative furniture and materials, and leading workshops that have are designed toward helping students with ideas.

Strategy #4: Create a pipeline for I&E

Tactic #1: Coordinate all the faculty and staff

This will be done by meeting with all the faculty who host I&E focused classes or programs and let them know about each other so they know where to send students for more resources. To begin we will look at our Potential Value and Applied Value resources listed in our Landscape Canvas. This is be the basis for our attempt to coordinate the faculty and strengthening our I&E Network.

• ADD Excel widget here.

Tactic #2: University Innovation Fellow feeder program

Our current University Innovation Fellow candidates believe that more students should be engaged and have the same experiences we had. The UIF program was a way to jump start our thinking, our idea, and our belief that we could accomplish anything and leave a lasting impact on our community.

Tactic #3: UW-Creative Commons Newsletter

Our campus has a lot of resources and a lot of people doing truly exciting work, however there is no centralized information bulletin board for I&E things. This will be our attempt to coordinate this and create a weekly digital Newsletter that we can have that goes out to all students on our mailing list as well as being disseminated through our leadership circle and other faculty and administrators who support our cause.

Strategy #5: I&E Certificate Program and Curriculum

Tactic #1: Innovator and Entrepreneur Certificate

This is an incentive program where students can be rewarded for participation in I&E activities on campus and also use it as a resume builder. We want students to think outside the box, but sometimes a little nudge is needed and this might be just the incentive to get students to participate in both the extracurricular programs as well as the courses offered in the various schools. This certificate can be rewarded by the UWM Research Foundation so it is not truly an academic certificate but it is still supported by a reputable segment of our campus.

Tactic #2: Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship

Create an official Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship. Many of our graduate students are participating in research which sometimes spurs into new ventures that transpire through our Technology Transfer Office or Research Foundation while other graduate students are pursuing ventures of their own. These ambitions should be rewarded and acknowledged. In a similar manner to our Undergraduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship, the graduate certificate would require students to take select courses that provide them the basic skills they would need, such courses could include:

• Product Realization
• Lean Launch Pad
• Innovation and Commercialization
• Entrepreneurship
• Introduction to Entrepreneurship and Small Business Formation
• Venture Finance
• Marketing Research
• Business to Business Sales and Marketing
• Business Modeling of New Venture
• Entrepreneurship Internship through Research Commercialization (New idea)

The Entrepreneurship Internship through Research Commercialization could be a course where students who are working with a faculty member or by themselves and they are trying to commercialize an idea and pursue a new venture or business could receive academic credit, due to experiential learning by doing.

Impact

University of Wisconsin Milwaukee