Innovation and Entrepreneurship Strategic Priorities for the Colorado School of Mines
Contents
Vision for the Colorado School of Mines
Short-Term Strategy: Sparking Interest
Enable students by creating a collaborative space for creativity, design, and innovation.
Objectives:
1. Foster ideas, collaboration and creativity for students of all disciplines.
2. Create and sustain a culture of doing, making, innovation and entrepreneurship.
3. Promote learning-by-doing and provide resources to enable students to transform ideas into products that could be commercialized.
Many of the most forward-thinking companies provide spaces for employees that encourage innovation. Well-designed spaces often serve as catalysts for enhanced collaboration and innovation. We will create collaborative spaces for students that allow for greater creativity, design and innovation on campus. By holding events and meetings in the spaces, students across all disciplines will begin to use the spaces to work with others' projects.
In addition to having a few dedicated spaces, there are several common areas on campus that would make excellent pop-up spaces. We will provide guides and resources for students to successfully create a temporary collaborative space of their own anywhere on campus.
Mechanical Engineering Design Lab
In collaboration with Professor Jered Dean of Mechanical Engineering, the senior design lab has evolved into a collaborative workspace for student projects, meetings, workshops and classes. The space has open hours, allowing students from every major and grade level to collaborate on academic or personal projects.
Establish regular Design, Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship (DICE) events
By collaborating with organizations and faculty across campus, we will hold events that expose students to proven concepts and principles that lead to truly innovative solutions. Having regular events will help foster a community of innovation and entrepreneurship that doesn't often occur in a traditional lecture setting.
Leveraging Existing Student Organizations to put on DICE events
There are numerous campus organizations (SWE, AIChE, SPE, EWB, Tau Beta Pi, Blue Key) that have the resources to organize successful DICE events to increase opportunities for student innovation. These events could include makeathons, hackathons, design challenges, business model competitions, and many more.
Problem of the Week
To change the student mindset on campus, we will start holding pop-up meetings in high-traffic areas to discuss a "Problem of the Week." We will increase exposure to, and engagement with, problem-focused design by allowing students the ability to stop by and participate without any major commitment. The pop-up meetings can be expanded to allow for low-resolution prototyping, using arts and crafts or video. Images from the pop-up events will be posted online. The pop-up meetings will also serve as advertisement for other DICE events.
Design Weekend
Currently, there is no coordination between EPICS and other design courses across campus to exhibit student projects; that needs to change. A campus-wide exhibition, open to the community, will provide students from all disciplines with the opportunity to showcase their projects, and also strengthen the culture of design, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship on campus.
TEDx
Previously, University Innovation Fellows have seen success in improving the innovation and entrepreneurial landscape on their campuses by hosting a TEDx event. A lot of student interest in TED already exists, and this interest can be leveraged to make a successful event to serve as inspiration for the university. A TEDx event can be focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, to inspire a campus community, by showcasing examples of innovative faculty research, successful entrepreneurial alumni and current students who have commercialized technology and achieved positive economic, societal and environmental impact.
3 Day Startup: 3DS Springboard
3DS Springboard is an interactive workshop focused on the beginning steps of launching a company or a project through on-campus innovation. During four 90-minute sessions over one week, students will learn-by-doing with the 3DS team, Epicenter University Innovation Fellows leaders on campus, and other students in the community who are passionate about starting something!
Next Steps: Institutional Acceptance and Support for DICE
Update design classes to incorporate modern design & development principles
Most students attending Mines are exposed to design in EPICS I, EPICS II (including Department-Specific EPICS II) and Senior Design. Only a few of the curriculums incorporate the following ideas/processes widely practiced in the industry: design-thinking, problem-focused design, rapid and low-resolution prototyping, fast failure and lean principles. Incorporating all of these practices into the curriculum would properly prepare students to develop truly innovative solutions to real problems. The design courses could allow for more creativity and innovation by shifting from constraining projects to open-ended, problem-based projects.
Grow and expand the academic entrepreneurship offering
According to the Undergraduate Bulletin, there is an “Area of Special Interest (ASI) in Entrepreneurship” that consists of 3 classes that are not currently offered.
To demonstrate that entrepreneurship is a priority to the University and the Department of Economics and Business, the ASI needs to be updated and promoted. There are several course offerings focused on design-thinking and entrepreneurship that should be incorporated into a certificate program, minor or area of special interest for entrepreneurship.
Ideally, the entrepreneurship program would incorporate a multidisciplinary senior design alternative course that allows students from any major to apply principles from the engineering and entrepreneurship curriculums.
Creation of Grand Challenges Themed Learning community
Mines requires all first-year students to live on campus in the residence halls. Programs that promote design, innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship can be put in place for interested students living on campus. Mines has several themed learning communities, and a community focused on the NAE's Grand Challenges would have a large impact in creating a sustainable culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Establish a speaker series for design, innovation and entrepreneurship
Creating a regular speaker series focused on design, innovation and entrepreneurship will develop interest, as well as connect the entrepreneurial community within Mines to current students in other disciplines. Many Mines alum and faculty have relevant experience and insight, which could inspire a new generation of makers, doers and entrepreneurs. A series focused on I&E would be a multidisciplinary initiative that would have wide-spread support across campus, due to the universal nature of I&E principles.
Long-term Vision
Create a multidisciplinary Design, Innovation and Entrepreneurship institute
The establishment of a multidisciplinary design institute will allow for the creation of a modern engineer that is equipped to develop solutions to complex real-world problems. Having a design institute would make Mines the premier institution for engineering and applied-science education.
Many of the nation's best engineering schools have a program or institute for design, innovation or entrepreneurship:
Stanford - d.school
MIT - Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Harvard - Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard (TECH)
UC Berkeley - Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology
Michigan - Center for Entrepreneurship
Georgia Tech - Enterprise Innovation Institute
North Carolina State - Engineering Entrepreneurs Program EEP
Illinois - Technology Entrepreneurship Center
CU Boulder - eship program
The Colorado School of Mines has the opportunity to become a national leader for design, innovation and entrepreneurship.