Priorities:CCNY Student Priorities
Student Priorities
- Project Pitch VIDEO
'Big goal: Our big vision is to ultimately make City College a campus that allows members of the community, students, faculty, and alumni to have the ability to create, innovate and chase their dreams. We envision a campus where every major and person from any walk of life can step into a space and make their idea come to reality. A space where anyone can recieve advice and feedback on their big ideas to make change in the world. We believe that City College''s diversity is what sets us apart and that in collaboration from that diversity is what would truly foster innovation and entrepreneurship on campus.
Essentially: create a student led studio space, dedicated to raising awareness of innovation and opportunities on campus.
Strategy #1 Connecting Students to Entrepreneurs
Tactic 1-Entrepreneurship in Residence
Our campus needs more experienced Entrepreneurs on campus both as a valuable networking tool for the students and a source of information for other budding entrepreneurs on campus. Entrepreneurs can continue to grow their network through their residency while offering “office hours” for students and faculty who’d like to stop by and learn more about what it takes to build a business. A vetting process will be needed to order to find who is the right fit for being an Entrepreneur in residence. We’d work with our alumni network and company contacts to help make this a reality.
Tactic 2- Movers and Shakers Speaker Events
Sometimes you can’t get entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers to do a residency on campus, but we might be able to get them to agree to a speak! We’d love to do a planned speaker series with Q & A’s that are discussion based to raise more awareness of entrepreneurial thinking. Our interviews with the speakers will include industry news, lessons, and interesting opinions and ideas.
Strategy #2 Introducing Students to Design Thinking
Tactic 1- Boot Camps
Boot camps are a great way to introduce students to short workshops centered around design thinking. City College does not have any classes or that cater to design thinking, so one day boot camps would be great to get students working together and learning how to tackle problems from a design thinking perspective while encouraging students to solve major problems and issues in the world.
Tactic 2- Incorporating Design Thinking into Classes
Our students have no times for anything outside of classes so while many of our students learn skills that can help in design thinking, very few classes offer a design thinking platform where creativity can run free and students can learn to tackle real life problems and come up with innovative solutions. Involving faculty on campus to help foster creativity on campus through design thinking will really help to engage the students with the material they’re learning.
Strategy #3 Increase Student’s Awareness of Opportunities outside campus
Tactic 1- Company tours
As a busy commuter school, CCNY does not offer students the time or resources to provide quality professional development. Student led company tours allow a hands-on approach to solving this problem. The experience will give students a sense of urgency when applying themselves to working towards the goals much earlier than most. The sense of excitement of seeing what you want to become in action can inspire and motivate students to sit in the very chair they have seen on their tour. Company tours can offer students short sessions with an industry expert that reveal to students the inner workings of their field of interest. In an economy where jobs are so competitive, the proper drive can give a student the means to tackle these competitive roadblocks with a solid background.
Tactic 2- Entrepreneurship Newsletters
To build up on company tours, we can incorporate newsletter surrounding innovation in these companies. We’d like to have a newsletter geared more towards those interested in knowing the events either on campus or in other spaces that relate to innovation, workshops, career information, etc. Students get a lot of emails about events but not a targeted newsletter. These targeted newsletters would be incorporate some of our own I&E related events, information about companies, and what’s new in certain industries. We can work with aspiring journalist students to cover news in NYC about I&E.
Strategy #4 Provide venues of Opportunities
Tactic 1- Targeted Career Fairs
While our school hosts career fairs, they aren’t very targeted towards those in specific majors and concentrations. We’d like to have more targeted career fairs, bringing in more companies relevant to certain majors can interests. Like a career for for students in the arts with studios and creative companies. A career fair for students interested in marketing and social media with companies who have positions and internships catered to these demographics.
Related Links
University Innovation Fellows - Fall 2016
