Priorities:Boise State University Student Priorities

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Project Pitch Video

Boise State University - Fall 2016 - Project Pitch 

Strategy #1: Multidisciplinary Student-teams Showcase + Pitch New Models of Education

Engineering & Innovation Living-Learning Community

  • Freshmen students with majors in the College of Innovation and Design and the College of Engineering live together and take a class which involves community service and team building, as well as aspects of the different majors encompassed by CID and Engineering.
  • This Living-Learning Community (LLC) was just established (formerly it was only engineering students), and thus could be a great place to prototype the implementation of I&E concepts and engage freshmen with these ideas
  • This is also a great place to test the effectiveness of LLCs in creating a community across disciplines

Introduce I&E Concepts in Introduction to Engineering Classes

  • All incoming freshmen engineering students are required to take ENGR 120 (Introduction to Engineering) or ENGR 130 (Introduction to Engineering Applications)
  • These courses are project-based, and teach students about engineering disciplines, as well as developing critical thinking and provides a "design-oriented engineering experience"
  • ENGR 130 involves a service project where students work with a client from the community to apply the engineering design process to solve a problem
  • While some design thinking is already a part of these courses, there could be room for the addition of more explicity human-centered design principles into the curriculum
  • This could also be a platform to introduce engineering students to entrepreneurship concepts to which they may not otherwise be exposed 

Promote Growth of Vertically Integrated Projects

  • The Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program unites undergraduate education and faculty research in a team-based context
  • Undergraduate VIP students earn academic credits, while faculty and graduate students benefit from the design/discovery efforts of their teams
  • The Boise State University VIP program is part of a broad national and international consortium of universities
  • While this program already exists in an early phase, more work remains to create campus-wide awareness about the vision and purpose of Vertically Integrated Projects in order to attract students and faculty to participate in current and new projects
  • This program presents an inherent opportunity for a culture of I&E to thrive in a community of students and faculty from different disciplines across campus
  • VIP projects differ from a traditional research lab setting in that the experiences, interests, and abilities of all members - faculty and students alike - are valued equally
  • Close-knit VIP teams provide an opportunity to support vulnerable populations of students who might not finish their degrees without a supportive community and mentorship opportunities

Provide Opportunities for Entrepreneurship Mentoring to Engineering Students

  • The New Product Development Lab, housed within the College of Engineering, mostly provides rapid prototyping and design consulting services to local businesses and entrepreneurs outside the university, but is also a resource available to student entrepreneurs that is not currently well-publicized
  • While Venture College's services are available to all students, and they have been expanding their reach to Computer Science majors, this services is still unknown to most engineering majors
  • A goal for the future would be to implement a program which partners engineering students with ideas with mentors from the local entrepreneurship community and/or students from the Business College to help them work toward commercializing their ideas (or co-developing ideas for new ventures)

Strategy #2: Building Resilience, Belonging and Esteem

Create and Integrate a Protected Class Period for Students Within Each Department for only Pro-Social or Self-Discovery Activities

  • The Honors College provides dorms and multi-disciplinary classes to connect students from different majors
  • Some Living-Learning Communities offer cross-disciplinary themes such as fitness, while some are major- or college-specific.
  • The MakerLab is a makerspace hosted in the Boise State Library and run by librarians and student employees.  This space is very user-driven, and offers student- and staff-led workshops on technologies such as arduinos and 3D printing.  Students can print designs for free on the two 3D printers.

Host a TEDx Boise Viewing Party

  • TEDx tickets are often outside the price range of interested students
  • Hosting a live streaming event of the talks would be a great opportunity to foster collaboration and creativity among a group of interested students
  • This could be a good "hook" to get students into the event, where we could then direct them to other on- and off-campus resources

Related Links

Boise State University

Boise State University Student Priorities

University Innovation Fellows

Spring 2016:

Ann Delaney

Kelly Schutt

Rebecka Seward

Fall 2016:

Sienna George

Alexander Schloss

Donovan Kay