Greetings! My name is Mike Dominik, and I'm a Senior Lecturer faculty member at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ, USA. My diverse academic background includes BS Electrical Engineering (Rutgers), MS Engineering Management of Technology (UPenn), MBA (Rowan), and PhD in Organizational Leadership (Eastern Univ). My career includes 15 years as an engineer with General Electric and Lockheed Martin, followed by 16 more years as a two-time technology entrepreneur (the software startup I co-founded called NetIDEAS was acquired by Parametric Technology Corporation). I have proudly served as an educator at Rowan since 2016.
Rowan University is the USA's fourth fastest-growing public research university, and has nearly doubled in size in the past decade, from around 10.000 students in 2010 to nearly 20,000 now. With that growth comes challenges - and therefore more OPPORTUNITY to be innovative and entrepreneurial! Our first Leadership Circle of Fellows was formed in 2016, and two more leadership circles followed in 2018 and 2019. COVID in 2020 caused us to put a hold on UIF for one year, but we are back in 2021 with another four students!
Below we feature briefs about each of the Rowan University Leadership Circles and what they have notably accomplished as University Innovation Fellows.
Rowan UIF LC 1: 2016-2017. Brandon Graham (co-founder and CEO of Arke Aeronautics), Antonia Nuzzolo, Kayla Callaway, Melody Tashjian. Rowan's first LC is most notable for establishing Rowan University's "maker space", known as Studio 231, which was acknowledged by the AACSB with a 2019 Innovations That Inspire award. This LC held the first UIF E&I convention at Rowan University, which attracted more than 100 participants in April 2017. Their Silicon Valley meetup in early 2017 was a rousing success! Check out this podcast interview with these four Fellows.
Rowan UIF LC 2: 2018-2019: Jeffrey Stransky (now an engineering PhD student), Sarandeep Kaur, Brandon Baker, Edward Estremera. Rowan's second LC is notable for having delivered some 50 Design Thinking workshop events, some of which then significantly influenced the delivery model of Rowan's "Think Like an Entrepreneur" summer academy for underprivileged and underserved high school students, a now-recurring summer program that uses Design Thinking approaches to develop big-world solutions for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Thanks to the groundbreaking work by this LC, programs like TLAE helped Rowan's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship win a 2021 global impact award from the International Council for Small Business.
Rowan UIF LC 3: 2019-2020: Michael Weinberg, Alison Price, Gillian Castaldo, Erin DeBiasse. Rowan's third LC worked hard to successfully design an impactful program based on campus public safety, but COVID-19 arrived in early 2020, and the team had to back off from its ambitious plans. Erin is now studying at the Univeritat Pompeu Fabara in Barcelona, Spain, while Alison has launched her biomedical engineering career in the New York City area at Celularity, and Gillian has started her career at Stonefield Engineering in Princeton NJ. Michael will graduate in Spring 2022, and brings his Design Thinking skills to his work as a freelance 3D printing entrepreneur.
Rowan UIF LC 4 (candidates): 2021-2022: Kenyon Burgess, Aatish Gupta, Shruti Dalwadi, Isabella Marshall. Ambitious and motivated, our fourth Rowan LC may have the most upside of all of our Fellows. Overachievers all, their UIF program is taking shape and looks to be extraordinary!
It's a joy and privilege to be the Faculty Champion for Rowan's University Innovation Fellows, and I am excited to see what our 2021-2022 Fellows will accomplish!