School:Fordham University
We’re a Jesuit, Catholic university. Our spirit comes from the nearly 500-year
history of the Jesuits. It’s the spirit of full-hearted engagement—with profound ideas, with communities around the world, with injustice, with beauty, with the entirety of the human experience.
This is what makes us Fordham: We’re a tight community in New York City, and we value and educate the whole person. Much of our Jesuit history and mission comes down to three ideas, which, translated from the Latin, mean roughly this:
- Strive for excellence in everything you do.
- Care for others.
- Fight for justice.
It adds up to an education that works.
Wisdom, experience, morality, critical thinking, creative problem-solving. This is what Fordham students take into the world.
Contents
Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Promoting Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Fordham promotes student innovation and entrepreneurship through formal programs and extracurricular activities. Fordham offers many different concentrations that deal with innovation and entrepreneurship, from sustainable business to social innovation concentration, Fordham enables its students to explore and learn valuable skills. Fordham also offers classes that allow students to pursue innovation or entrepreneurship after college, such as “Launch Your Start-Up” and “Applied Innovation Consulting”. Fordham houses numerous extracurricular activities and innovation spaces that further allow students to expand their knowledge outside the classroom. The Fordham Foundry and the Social Innovation Collaboratory are spaces and extracurricular activities where like-minded individuals are able to help one another and work together. Through the Fordham Foundry, there are competitive opportunities that give students a chance to win monetary prizes based on their businesses or business ideas, such as the Pitch Challenge and Venture Up. Additionally, the Entrepreneurship Society, Concourse Group, and Social Impact 360 are other extracurricular activities and outlets for students to further their interests in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Encouraging Faculty Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Fordham has been named a “Changemaker Campus” by Ashoka, a global organization that honors universities for innovative efforts to foster social good and strengthen society. As a jesuit institution, Fordham strongly believes in social innovation and entrepreneurship, and investing in the continuous development of their faculty and staff. Although Fordham has yet to pursue any policy changes to encourage more faculty entrepreneurship, the faculty lead by example, actively share their learnings and best practices, and participate in new advancing the field of social innovation and change making in higher education.
Actively Supporting the University Technology Transfer Function
Fordham has a fundamental respect for intellectual property that is produced by either employees or students at the University. Fordham even has a nationally recognized Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal, that has been running since 1990. Fordham offers a variety of classes to educate students on the fundamentals and specific of patent laws. The University has sought seed and alumni donations to properly fund professional and technological research.
Facilitating University-Industry Collaboration
Fordham has the office of corporate and foundations relations which works with the President's council to establish strategic partnerships with corporations. They create mutually beneficial relationships between the University and corporations. Some examples of actions they’ve helped institute include: hosting CEO breakfasts, using relationships for student internships, guest lectures from business professionals and more. The Fordham Foundry, Fordham’s hub for innovation and entrepreneurship, also works closely with numerous student and alumni run start-up businesses. The Fordham Foundry provides great resources through their network and partnerships with NYC Business Solutions, BNP Paribas, and NASDAQ OMX Education Foundation to help, educate, and connect entrepreneurial students.
Engaging with Regional & Local Economic Development Efforts
As the only Jesuit University in New York, Fordham is committed to the discovery of Wisdom and the transmission of Learning, through research and effort to help its surrounding community. New York City provides Fordham with a special kind of classroom, its unparalleled resources shape and enhance Fordham's professional and undergraduate programs. The University recognizes its debt of gratitude to the City and its own responsibility to share its gifts for the enrichment of our City. Furthermore, Fordham is committed to research and education that assist in the alleviation of poverty, the promotion of justice, the protection of human rights and respect for the environment. Fordham has a variety of programs that get students involved in the community and local business through volunteers opportunities. Opportunities include Urban Plunge, the Center for Community Engaged learning, and the Dorothy Day Center. These resources really give students hands-on experiences to contribute to a greater cause.
Landscape Canvas
The 2018 Landscape Canvas can be found here.
Strategic Priorities
(1) I & E Coalition: We have identified this idea to be our top priority, along with the App. After discussion, we have determined that this coalition has long-term potential and its impact has the possibility to reach the entire student body of Fordham. We also determined that it will take roughly a month to form this coalition but relies on the effort and mindset of the clubs in regards to its impact and effect.
The I & E Coalition would meet on a bi-monthly basis and consist of 1 or 2 e-board members from every I & E club/organization, 1 or 2 representatives from the United Student Government Budget Committee and 1 representative from the United Student Government Operations Committee. These meetings would be a platform for each club to discuss the problems they are facing, potential solutions for their solutions, and ways to collaborate.
In time, the coalition will increase the synergy between the different clubs and they will work together to make bigger change. Change like increasing the resources at our second campus, creating events together, gaining more involvement by marketing the clubs as a whole, teaching Design Thinking workshops, creating new classes and much more! We truly believe if this is successful, Fordham as a whole will be on a much better path with an innovative future.
(1) App: We have also identified the App as a top priority as well as the I&E Coalition. After our discussion, we came to the final conclusion that an app has the potential to impact every Fordham student if they all use the app, but it would take a while to build and work out the bugs. We estimate it could take up to a year to get the app up and running, but the timeline is not clear as of now due to the fact that the Foundry, the entrepreneurial hub on campus, has created apps and could possibly help us achieve it sooner.
In order to bring this project to life, we would need to connect with people who have the ability to code and have appropriate software. The next step in the process is to speak with the Foundry about the help they may be able to provide and how many people would need to be involved in creating the app. Specifically, I would like to speak with Sean Johnson, an entrepreneur in residence who helped with the creation of another app over the course of this past summer. In addition, I intend to call upon students who have created apps in the past like a colleague named Joseph VanGostein.
In terms of logistics, not only would we need to create the interface that is user-friendly manner (and none of us know how to code!), but we would also need to market it correctly to clubs. While we have gotten positive feedback as of now from clubs, making sure the platform would be used by all the organizations would be an important part of ensuring that it does fix the communication problem.
(2) Showcase: Our third priority is currently the Innovation and Entrepreneurship showcase. It has the potential to inform students of the clubs available but we worry of the possibility that it might not gain traction. The ability to coordinate this many clubs to each join our mission and produce something outside their norms is also a perspective issue.
To make this a reality we would need to establish a close relationship with a variety of the clubs offered at Fordham. After this, we would need to get together and find a similar format to which they would all agree to participate in this. The responsibility of finding and/or funding a guest speaker would also be on the UIF team and we would most likely start with the Alumni foundation as well as speaking with Christine Jansen among other professors that are involved in this field to see if they are willing to utilize their connections.
Logistically speaking, it might be a challenge to establish a day in which so many variables would be willing to meet t the same time. For the Rose Hill campus, there are many spaces which serve as options to host such an event, as the campus is quite large both inside and out. As for the Lincoln Center campus, the options are significantly smaller and we would have to coordinate with multiple advisors and faculty to see which spaces we have the ability to reserve and the process to secure it.
(3) Workshop: Our fourth priority would be the design thinking workshop in the freshmen Intro to Business classes (The Ground Floor class). Because this solution would only have the potential to impact the freshmen class, we did not think it should be a top priority. Moreover, because freshmen take this class during their first semester at Fordham, we would not be able to actually begin conducting workshops till Fall of 2019. The key tactics to bring this workshop to life would be getting approval from the administrators overseeing the curriculum of the Ground Floor, and figuring out the logistics of who will conduct the workshop during which days and class times. Another key tactic would be to train volunteers (perhaps students who passionate about I&E or are participants in I&E resources such as clubs) to teach and moderate these workshops in order to scale this workshop to all Ground Floor classes. Caterina would be in charge of bringing this project to life.