Priorities:Florida Institute of Technology Student Priorities

Overview

Florida Tech has also recently been names as one of the Top 50 Entrepreneurial Universities by Forbes, which is a testament to the purpose efforts undertaken in recent years to create a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. As a private institution, Florida Tech has a history of high-quality undergraduate engineering education. However, Florida Tech has yet to realize its entrepreneurial potential due to a lack of formal training and education in entrepreneurship of faculty, the administration, and students. Largely, only a few faculty initially spearheaded the entrepreneurial endeavors, but as with many culture-changing endeavors, the current champions seek to create a critical mass of followers, adopters, and co-implementers.

Strategy # 1: Increase interdisciplinary collabration for student capstone projects

Tactic # 1: Create a pilot capstone design program incorporating college of engineering and college of business students

Currently, students spend an entire year at FIT developing an almost industry-ready designs. Many times, these designs go on display at the university, but unfortunately, do not go much further than this. We are trying to incorporate business students into these projects to create successful businesses out of these projects that students work long hours developing.

Tactic # 2: Amalgamize all individual departmental capstone courses into one overarching, univesity-wide capstone course

Senior Design is currently run by each individual major. Multidisciplinary projects exist far and few between, which is a disservice to the students as well as the university. We wish to eradicate the current major-specific senior design program and make cross-major projects more commonplace, if not required. This gives a more in-depth experience of a real industry project.

Tactic # 3: Get industry members to advise and sponsor the univeristy-wide capstone projects

We wish to see more industry-sponsored projects as capstone projects as well. We have had many successful projects sponsored by companies like Northrop Grumman, Harris Corporation, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and more. This interaction not only helps students feel the real experience of being an engineer in these companies, but they often are offered jobs as a result. Additionally, with the funding provided by the sponsor, these projects are of minimal cost to the university, enabling other unsponsored projects to receive more funding.

Strategy # 2: Create awareness about existing facilities for Innovation and Entreprenuership

Tactic # 1: Hold an innovative desgin challenge with emphasis on using indicated facilities

We wish to hold a student design event, where we will gather in a highly traveled campus location to have the maximum amount of participation (i.e. Dining Hall, Gym, Senior Design Center). We will hold a competition to engage students to utilize as many of our campus resources as possible (i.e. Machine Shop, Electronic Support Lab, Fab Lan, Innovation Center, Library, etc.).

Tactic # 2: Conduct a rapid design comptetion using articles acquired from a scavenger hunt

The competition will be such that all students have the ability to participate in as well as staff and faculty to create a campus wide day of fun. It will be challenging and thought-provoking, but no major will have an advantage. This is good to reach out to the community as well as the students and their professors. 

Tactic # 3: Hold an Innovation and Entreprenuership Fair

We wish to hold an event to showcase all of the innovation that students have been involved with. Some students may have been a part of a big project during an internship or maybe some students invented something in their dorm. If it is innovative, we want to see it! This is a great event to hold to encourage collaboration on projects going forward. If you have a good design, but you do not have the skills to code a stellar User Interface, you may attract a fellow student to help you out at such an event and more. 

Strategy # 3: Start a Student Council

Tactic # 1: Hold the first student council meeting

Description: Florida Tech has many great organizations like Tau Beta Pi and Society of Women Engineers that get students involved in projects related to their major and creates networking opportunities. However, it’s difficult to plan collaborative events with other organizations. The objective of the student council is to oversee and plan collaborative events between the engineering and business clubs and societies at Florida Tech. For example, SC would be in charge of planning E-week where we can have guest speakers, competitions and seniors and organizations can showcase their projects. Overall, we want to show others how our students at Florida Tech can apply their knowledge learned in class solve real world problems.

Milestones:

·         Each organization president will introduce themselves.

·         Dr. Schlegel will explain KEEN’s role in the foundation of the Student Council

·         Team building competition

·         Present why each president should join the student council.

·         Announce next group meeting. (Meetings will be twice a month).

Check out our website for Engineers Week: engineersweekfit.com

Tactic # 2: Host Florida Tech Engineering Week 2016

Description: Engineering Week 2016 will be from February 22, 2016 to February 27, 2016. Multiple engineering organizations at Florida Tech are working together to have fun filled week to show how great engineering has changed the world we live in.

Milestones:

·         Got 20 engineering organizations to sponsor events during the week

·         Found speakers for the opening and closing ceremony

·         Host two tours with local engineering companies

·         Showcase the new KEEN weekly innovation challenge

·         Bridge the barrier between different major

·         First successful event planned by multiple organizations

·         Formed new friendships while planning an event that hasn’t been held at Florida Tech since 1999

·         Gained visibility with student and faculty stakeholders

Tactic # 3: Group Industry Projects

Description: Florida Tech is blessed to be located in the heart of the space coast region. However, not many events are held with local companies since there are no solid partnerships with the student organizations. In my experience, it has been difficult to get my voice heard by large local companies as a student. However, with the combined voice of the student council we can make a stronger impact when reaching out to local companies.

Milestones

·         Met Mrs. Sauerman,  Corporate Sponsored Program Research Vice President at Florida Tech

·         Schedule a meeting

·         Mentorship between organizations

·         Together we are stronger

Tactic # 4: Channel of communcation

Description: I’ve learned that communication is a vital skill that can sometimes be overlooked while trying to pass your differential equations class or finish your 20 page lab report. But communication is key for all professional careers. Our goal is to meet face to face with all the presidents of the engineering council and make connection to make communication more efficient. Together the organizations at Florida Tech can accomplish so much more than trying to survive on their own.

Milestones

·         Avoid schedule conflicts between organizations

·         Network of communication allows smaller clubs to gain more exposure

·         Mentorship between organizations

·         Together we are stronger

Tactic # 5: Form a board of advisors

Description: The sustainability of the student council depends on faculty that will be able to moderate the transition between past and new members. Therefore, our mission for this semester is to find faculty in at Florida Tech that would serve as a board of advisor to ensure that the student council survives for future years to come.

Milestones

·         KEEN has offered to help launch the student council and provide future support

Tactic # 6: Launch as a separate organization

We wish to hold an….

Strategy # 4: Running the student organization EMpwr

Tactic # 1: Bring together the leaders of all organization on campus

Tactic # 2: Co-host events that raise awareness about innovation and entrepreneurial mindsets on & off campus Tactic # 3: 

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