Priorities:Western Michigan University Student Priorities

Contents

Strategy 1

Marketing for Campus Connections

Students that would like to meet others outside of their discipline should be able to find others that are working towards the same project goal. They can connect via common interestes, common expertises, and common aspirations. 

Strategy 2

Improving Campus Collaboration Culture

C^3 is an initiative to connect students to each other and to peer mentors who can aid in the overall understanding of an individual topic. This helps create an environment of learning and teamwork.

Strategy 3

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

Interdisciplinary Collaboration on campus could be highly benefitted by a space that draws students regardless of major or course of study. The escape into nature aspect built in with an open productive space could exponentially augment the students interactino with each other, leading to a more cohesive and well rounded campus collective.

Strategy 4

Focus on Intrapreneurship

Overview: Due to the campus culture at WMU, “entrepreneurship” seems to only be a buzzword. To many students, entrepreneurship only means starting a business from scratch. While this is true, it is not fully representative of the entire scope of entrepreneurship and innovation. The other portion is often called intrapreneurship, or innovation that occurs within existing industries.

Tactic #1: While students within the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences are constantly building, creating, and designing solutions, few realize how much innovation is actually occurring, and how the lessons they are learning can be applied to their future career. One option is to bring in industry leaders to speak about how they use design thinking and innovation in their workplace. This could stress the importance of entrepreneurial thinking as a whole, independent of whether the student wanted to open a business or enter the workplace.

Tactic #2: WMU could also offer intrapreneurship workshops to highlight the skills necessary to be successful in particular industries. Focus would be on the approach and application of the design cycle within the restraints of a company.

Tactic #3: Entrepreneurship can be introduced to all students in introductory courses. While the Industial Engineering department as well as the Business College do a good job of exposing their students to entrepreneurship many other departments have lots to gain by introducing this concept to students in the early stages of their academic career.

Strategy 4

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Resource Introduction for Underclassmen

Overview: In talking to younger students on campus, we found that many did not know about the opportunities that were readily available to them. By not knowing about the opportunities, they were unable to take advantage of them, completely defeating the purpose of the opportunities at all. We believe that students should know about all opportunities available to them so that if they are interested, they can partake in entrepreneurship and innvoation activities on campus. 

Tactic #1: Tabling at admitted student events. By being present at events for students before they even attend classes, opportunities such as the Innovation Club will be more prevelant in students' minds when they do get to college. This is especially true for students who try everything before classes start because they won't be too busy to learn more in the first place. 

Tactic #2: Better marketing tactics for things like the library makerspace and the Innovation Club. By having more marketing materials and ambassadors for entrepreneurship and innovation around campus, students will be exposed to opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise known about. Particularly with ambassadors, students would be able to ask questions and learn more about their options than with traditional flyers. 

Strategy 5

Interdisciplinary Student Engagement Initiative

Overview: After getting insight from the student body from WMU's campus, we noticed there was a lack of interdisciplinary student engagement. We believe a solution to this problem is holding an event in which all students can participate no matter school standing or major. This event would foster a collaborative environment at the university between students, faculty, and the community.

Tactic #1: The event we have in mind is a 48-hour startup weekend/hackathon. At this event students will participate for 48 hours to innovate, create, and network with employers. There will be a single challenge that students will create and help innovate a new idea involving a company, product, or business plan ultimately presenting this model to a panel of judges. There will be a monetary award being sourced from the company and school for the winners of the competition. To avoid pre-planning, the topic will kick off the 48-hour challenge. 

Tactic # 2: Preceding the 48-hour hackathon/startup weekend, we will host a TEDx event to bolster student excitement for change in higher education. It will create a domino effect on how students would want to incorporate change. Which ultimately will lead to the creation of an authentic community between student and faculty for innovating change on campus. 

Related Links

Graduated Innovation Fellows:  Christopher Woodward, Persefoni_Lauhon, Zach_Crawford

Current Fellows: Mackenzie Preston, Jill Puckett, Nathan LaWarre, Daniel Mozel, Andreas Hobelsberger, Megan Miller, Saleh Mohamed

University: Western_Michigan_University