Overview

Morgan State University is the premier public urban research university in Maryland known for its excellence in teaching, intensive research, effective public service, and community engagement. Morgan prepares diverse and competitive graduates for success in a global, interdependent society.

Project Pitch Videos

Fall 2021 Video: Video Link

Spring 2018 Video: Video Link Fall 2022 Video: Video Link

Strategic Priorities

UIF FALL 2023

Strategic Priority #1

Innovative Teach Lab

Mission: To empower educators through cutting-edge Instructional Technology and Innovation Development Training. Dedication to equipping teachers, future teachers, and the community with the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to adapt to the evolving landscape of education and business. Cultivate a spirit of technology in education.

This involves a comprehensive approach to equipping educators with the necessary skills and knowledge to effectively integrate technology into their teaching methods. It includes:

Professional Development Programs: Implementing professional development programs that offer continuous training for educators. These programs will focus on the latest technological advancements, innovative teaching methods, and how to leverage technology to enhance instructional strategies.
Resource Management: Efficiently managing and providing resources, both technological and educational, to teachers. This ensures that educators have access to the tools and materials required to enhance their teaching methods
Supporting a Dynamic Learning Environment: Fostering an environment where teachers and future teachers can become proficient in leveraging technology. This entails creating a hub for training and retraining the academic community in emerging learning technological tools.
Promoting Equitable Learning: Empowering teachers to plan and implement innovative instruction that is learner-centered. The focus is on encouraging teachers to use technology to engage students and prepare them for the rapidly changing world, thereby promoting equitable learning experiences.
Strategic Partnerships: Collaborating with educational and technology institutions to support and strengthen the training initiatives. Building partnerships is vital for accessing expertise, resources, and cutting-edge tools.

UIF Fall 2022

Strategic Priority #1

Peer-to-Peer Entrepreneurship Growth

Enhance the entrepreneurship and innovation landscape by offering students an atmosphere of simultaneous learning and connection through Morgan's Leadership Circles. These circles will help members achieve their business goals through peer-to-peer learning, peer-to-peer support, and peer-to-peer accountability. Participants will meet regularly with like-minded people, discuss business challenges, learn from each other, learn from experts and mentors, and have a peer network that supports them and encourages accountability. The goal is to inspire members to be committed to each other’s and their own success and be willing to give and receive advice and ideas. We want to spur an entrepreneurial ecosystem that encourages students to grow together with the help of each other so that there can be a sharing of best practices and lessons learned, thereby minimizing avoidable failures.

Strategic Priority #2

Greater Interaction Between Disciplines and Among the Community

We see that there is a need to intersect students and faculty to cultivate camaraderie, networking and diversifying information exchange between various interdisciplinary departments. Our speaker series, BearTalks, will encourage in-person student engagement, diversify intellectual acumen and foster collaborative relationships across Morgan State’s Campus. Paying homage to “TEDTalks”, BearTalks is a social pilot event where students, faculty, and verified guests from the local community can present topics on various subjects across all disciplinary departments followed by the ability to network amongst fellow Morgan students and faculty, as well as local community members and business owners. BearTalks would be a place for collaboration and deepening in-person relationships amongst those within Morgan and it's vicinity.

UIF Fall 2021

Strategic Priority #1

360 Mentorship

The UIF students of 2021 will create a mentorship program that will aid in the matriculation transition from freshman to graduate level. This program will provide a 360 experience whereby students are mentored by faculty, students, and executive leadership. This will be an extension of the PeerBear mentorship program, which is geared at mentoring first-year students. We intend to match students based on demographics, concentrations/majors, greek life, career interest, etc. This plan has an additional layer when it pertains to international students. For instance, instead of having one student mentor, international students will be paired with two mentors (one domestic student & one international student.) This proposed mentorship program will encompass mentors submitting monthly reports of what works, what does not work, and what can be improved.

Strategic Priority #2

Research Hub

As an extension to Morgan's entrepreneurial center currently being developed, the research hub will serve as an additional layer. This will be a prime center for individuals looking to pilot their research, receive feedback, discover research resources, present ideas for a large audience, and participate in expo competitions and conferences. All help will be organized as a cohesive body to make them easily accessible at this center.

UIF 2019

Strategic Priority #1

MSU Innovation Milestone / Plans
The UIF students of 2019 will create a Innovative 5 year plans approved by the University President and molded by the university faculty and students of how we will promote innovation changes.This plan will be tailored with student and faculty feedback of ideas to innovate and improve the quality and lifestyle at Morgan State University. Similar President Wilson Strategic Plan we will write and outline the goals we strive for along. We will reach out to each school on the campus and agree which initiatives will be apart of the first year milestones and then evaluate our progress and how the next years initiatives will follow. For instance, many of the foreign language teacher want to promote a language day to encourage clubs and organization where they enjoy variety of foods and practice linguistic skills. We could incorporate into the morgan calendar with faculty approval and coordination and eventually add this to the culture day we host. Overall this one milestone would be similar to a open house but for linguistics and this would be one of the goals we set for year one.
Msu Strategic Planning

Strategic Priority #2

Morg-avate
To implement a more innovative and growing Morgan State University community, it is essential to reach out to other schools in the area and even other community members to increase the amount of collaboration and integration of ideas at our school and within our community. Morgan needs to build long lasting relationships with other schools and the community to expand its innovative and collaborative culture. Schools such as: Johns Hopkins University, Towson, Coppin State University, and Loyola are close to Morgan, and having collaborative events with them where we have educational sessions about different innovative projects or challenges would be a great way to promote innovation in our community and expand past Morgan to other schools with different backgrounds and ideas. Having an event held over the span of a weekend where students from different majors, schools, and backgrounds could come together and learn design thinking techniques from experts and then actually apply those techniques in a competition or design thinking challenge would be great for students to really get hands on experience. This could include inspirational talks, design thinking sessions, and an allotted time where people with similar interests or passions no matter their major in school can group together to work towards coming up with an innovative solution to the challenge with a prize of some sort.

Strategic Priority #3

Alumni & Student Engagement

Based on our research, Alumni to student relationship/engagement is capable of improving innovation and entrepreneurship among students significantly but we noticed that this has not been utilized to its maximum potential in our school right now. We plan to set up and organize mentoring programs that would consists of several alumnis from different majors, in order to create opportunities for several students who would love to be mentored by people as experienced as the alumnis. This would help motivate and inspire the students to aspire higher. We would also love to make alumnis help/take part in student organizations activities in order to foster networking. The alumnis can be used as guest speakers in the student organizations or even club events in order to enlighten students about their experiences in the real world and also the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Strategic Priority #4

Improvement of the Innovative and Collaborative Culture

To motivate students and create awareness of innovation activities and opportunities on campus as well as within the DMV area . Students at Morgan are innovators. Some students are aware of this fact others are unsure.Based on our research students want to have a more active role in decisions that impact their learning and living environment on campus . As well as sharing their ideas on how to build the Morgan community upwards. We plan to solve this problem by hosting a TED talk that will not only motivate students but also teach them how to use their skills become innovators and make the change that they want to see. The TED talk series will be discussed and organized through the TED talk club initiative which will include not only students but faculty members . This will be one of the few clubs on campus that is not solely student led. The advantage of this would be creating a joined atmosphere refuting the banking model of education which suggest that the students know nothing and the teachers know everything.

Problem #1: Campus Communication

Campus Spirit is a defining character on any school’s campus. Morgan students need something to raise their dampened spirits and create a bubbly atmosphere. We realized that the real problem is students are not aware of things happening on campus.

MSU Announce is the email service that broadcasts information to students. On a daily basis, students receive about 3-5 emails relaying campus news. The volume of information received makes it hard to keep up with or filter out relevant information.

This observation led to the idea of placing electronic banners in key locations to disperse news all over campus. The banners can be used as a medium for students to advertise services, businesses, products, and events.

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Prototype Video:

Video link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PglWFK-f2wggDgbpUCgdZxwLKpvB6uiJ/view?usp=sharing

Problem #2: Improving Morgan Housing

Problem:Morgan State University (MSU) has a deficit of suitable housing for students with a

desire to live on campus. This academic school year, MSU admitted its largest freshmen class

ever, resulting in a shortage of housing, classes, and food for students of all academic levels.

Solutions: 1.Purchase residential buildings in the surrounding community to increase

housing options for full-time students.

What I learned:

1. The process of finding funding for future development is very difficult.

2. The school must find funding to increase the security presence for “off-campus” housing,

as well.

3. There needs to be a manager, much like a landlord, to maintain the integrity of the

residential buildings.

What I could improve:

I could have a further detailed approach to obtaining the funds necessary to begin the project.

PROTOTYPE: Ahousing proposal

Problem #3: Improving Morgan Food Experience

This aims to solve the food difficulty on campus. We are calling it “Bear Eats.” This is a phone application that students can use anytime to order food from restaurants close by. The driving is only open to students. While testing I learned a lot. These can be found in the Bear Eats feedback grid.

Video link: https://goo.gl/LRRfnF

Encourage student Awareness and Involvement on Campus

The University Innovation Fellows at Morgan State University are unique because our team is composed of individuals who have different backgrounds and experiences creating an abundance of ideas and perspectives. The team’s goal is to help bring about a change that the students want to see, and also help raise awareness and understanding of the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation. Morgan State offers many useful resources but they are either limited to certain majors or most students simply do not know they exist. Our goal is to make all labs, workshops and development centers accessible to every student.

Create an Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship (ICE) Center

This premier urban innovation center will foster creativity, improve entrepreneurial skill sets, and increase interdisciplinary collaborations. It will include a skills lab for learning hard skills. Weekly tech tutorials and workshops will also be given in this space.

Incorporate Diversity Representation

Students participating in a Multicultural week to showcase the treasures of the underrepresented ethnicities on campus. Morgan having a large variety of international students, all cultures should be celebrated and unbiased. A brief general overview of Multicultural week: There will be a variety of events throughout the week where students can represent their countries flags, traditional attire and food. A multicultural mixer for students to music from different countries. Lastly, an day of cultural education, where students have the opportunity to teach other students on campus about their countries.

Tactic #1: Utilizing the Student Government Association and various student campus orginizations propose to the Univeristy a Mulitcultural Week.

Tactic #2: Once we have gained interest, collobarate with different cultural organizations (eg. Carribean Student Association, Latin Student Association etc.) and draft a event of weekly activities that will appeal to the student body and represent a variety of cultures on campus.

Tactic #3: Make sure we have equal amount of representation and campus paticipation and promote the weekly events on campus. Draft promotional flyers and use social media as an outlet to reach our audience. Each cultural group will aslo be expected to invite their friends and family and enjoy their music, food, and traditional clothing.

Tactic #4: Broadcast to the Morgan MILE which is the community that surrounds Morgan so that they may be involved in the cultural education.

Install BearBoards throughout campus.

To implement this project, the steps that need to be taken are:

1. Present Idea to Stakeholders, and check the interest and support levels

2. Ask students on campus how they would like BearBoards

3. Come up with specific design and prototype of BearBoards

4. Reveal the prototype to Stakeholders and possible Sponsors and Donors

5. Begin the installation process for the BearBoards

6. Announce the opening of the BearBoards and promote usage throughout campus.

Product Development Center

The University Innovation Fellows plan to bring a Product Development Center to Morgan State University. This center will be a makerspace which allows students to develop prototypes. Morgan is home to many great ideas and wonderful entrepreneurs but students do not have a space to make those dreams come to fruition.

Design Thinking Workshops

Design thinking workshops that involve both engineering and business students will be beneficial because students will collaborate ideas when working with such individuals form different fields. Mixing the two majors can have a huge impact on the university and growth of the students as well. Design thinking invokes a new process for developing answers to problems from multidimensional perspectives making it an excellent project.

Tactical #1: Research and find students and or professors who are well versed in Innovation and Design Thinking concepts to offer there time to partake in Design Thinking Workshops yearly. Coordinate with Dr. Foster a UIF Advisor who has done a Design Thinking Course to collaborate on how to approach this program at Morgan.

Tactical #2: Incorporate a trial Design Thinking Workshop open to a small sample group. This will help to gain feedback, and allow us to understand how to improve the workshops before opening to the general public.

Tactical #3: Implement improvement from feedback and open Design Thinking works shops to Morgan students of all majors and classifications.

Tactical #4: Get students interested in working towards a Maker Space.

Alumni Student Mixer

The disconnect between Alumni and students can be helped by incorporating the Alumni Student Mixer. The Alumni House on campus has a specific budget and council used to incorporate the connection between alumni and students. Unfortunately these resources are never used to bring the two together. An Alumni Student mixer can help bridge the gap of non-communication and open opportunities for job offers, internships for students as well as possible events to incorporate on Morgan's campus that is beneficial to the campus community.

Tactic #1: Reach out to Alumni house on campus to act as a liaison between Alumni and current student body.

Tactic #2: Begin reaching out to Alumni introducing them to the idea and giving them ample time to schedule time with us.

Tactic #3: Work diligently with the administration in the Alumni House to solidify logistics (i.e. Location, maximum capacity, itinerary of the event, costs and materials needed, book a photographer, plan promotion tactics)

Tactic #4: Use promotion tactics as agreed between the Alumni House and our group to reach out to students on campus. In order to reach out to students, we will most likely partner with prevalent student organizations with high visibility (i.e. Student Government Association, SMOOTH Organization, National Council of Negro Women Club, etc.) to gain student body interest. Continue to promote this event to ensure great attendance.

Tactic #5: Send same promotional details to Alumni ranging from graduating Class of 1970 to the most recent graduating class. This allows a broad spectrum of Alumni that can appeal to the student body. Give Alumni ample amount of time to spread the word and to request off of work or arrange travel plans in time of event.

Tactic #6: Plan an agenda balancing fun activities (like a "Battle of the Decades" DJ competition, "Journey through time" fashion show of attire worn back when each class went to school divided by very 5 years, and a menu for attendees to be able to enjoy food). Plan engaging networking opportunities inbetween (Keynote speakers from top companies speaking to students, panel of Alumni for a professional Q&A, "Speed Interviewing"; match students with one Alumni from a top company and every 5 minutes the student would move down to the next Alumni, this would allow students to get a snapshot of the company and allows the Alumni to meet students for potential job offers (resumes and business cards would be exchanged, at the end, each would rate the other and high rankings will be paired after event)). This maximizes attendance for the current student body by attracting them with "fun" and professional development, as well as appealing to the Alumni for a walk down memory lane and an opportunity to give back to their Alma Mater.

Tactic #7: Launch event.

Expose more STEM students to Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Tactic #1-The provision of an Introduction to Business course for STEM majors will heavily attract the interest of these students who feel they just have to get the A's to become well rounded.

Tactic #2- Introducing a Campus Discovery concept called Morgan Konnect where students will be able to view and leverage the Morgan State University Landscape Canvas to Discover,Learn, Experiment, Pursue, and Spin out.

Tactic #3- Building an incubator for students who have personal projects they would like to pursue in line with technological innovation. This environment will aid the students to build a creative mindset which may be the seed of "The Next Big Thing."

Increase Student-Driven Commercialization

Morgan has stated that it will "support innovation in business and the commercialization of intellectual property through growing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, securing an increased number of patents, and establishing a technology transfer center to support the creation of new business and technology transfer enterprises"

Tactic #1: Local Tech Collaboration with incubators such as ETC Baltimore and accelerators such as Juxtopia:

Morgan has stated that it wants to "explore public/private collaborative relationships with developers, contractors, and other commercial groups and entities to develop new environmentally-sustainable and technologically-advanced administrative and student residential facilities, to expand Morgan’s physical presence throughout the state, and to promote the state and the Morgan brand."

Local partnerships that will expose students to industrial and entrepreneurial skills through projects designed by members of the local tech community.

Tactic #2: Redefining the terms of the intellectual property rights outline by Morgan State University:

Students are eager to build new technology and make changes, but as individuals who have work hard though using the resources of the college would like to believe that in the 21st century students can still receive recognition for their work. A proposal is that "any potentially patentable inventions belong to the university, and royalties are split between the inventor, his/her department and Morgan State University (1/3 each). For undergraduates, the IP is theirs, unless their work has been supported by research funds, or they have made use of shops, labs and other Morgan State University property more than incidentally."

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Morgan Konnect

Dining at Morgan

After countless interviews with students, we’ve concluded that dining is the biggest issue on campus. So, as a leadership circle, we’ve decided to take on several projects that we believe would drastically improve the dining experience at Morgan in all areas. From snacks, to small groceries, to toiletries, and especially breakfast, lunch and dinner, we believe our four projects will change the dynamic of how Morgan operates. Without quality meals, the overall ecosystem at Morgan would be damaged and hinder students from innovation, entrepreneurship, and their own personal and academic priorities. We believe that with better access to food, an ultimate necessity, our I&E ecosystem will improve.

Project 1: Social Media

Tactic1. Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat would be our target social media pages

Tactic 2. Upgrade our MSU dining website to state meals of the week along with nutritional facts

Tactic 3. Internet ads

Tactic 4. Guaranteed update on Morgan State University homepage for changed dining decisions

Project 2: Dining Poll

Tactic 1. Allow reviews on MSU food calendar website where you can rate the meals by stars and comments

Tactic 2. Take polls of vegan/ vegetarian/ international students’ preferences

Tactic 3. Staff evaluation by students who can comment anonymously

Tactic 4. Food website has staff photos and names helping identifying who was on call if an issue occurs or if the person dining would like to give a compliment

Tactic 5. Data of desired dining hours

Project 3: Desired Dining Hours

Tactic 1. Collect data of high volumes of dining swipes

Tactic 2. Push for these hours; given a students perspective. Breakfast 7:00am-10:30am, Lunch 11:00am- 3:30pm, Snack Shop 3:30pm- 4:30pm, Dinner 6:00pm- 10:00pm

Project 4: Convenience Store

Tactic 1. Increase late night security

Tactic 2. Put money on bear card to pay for products in store (Benny Bucks)

Tactic 3. Non-food products can be purchased with Benny Bucks (ex: school supplies, contraceptives, toiletries, event tickets, parking tickets etc.)

Tactic 4. Push for operation hours 8:00pm- 1:00am

Tactic 5. Ticket station (students will be able to purchase event tickets and pay for parking. It will be bear card accessible only)

Priorities:Morgan State University Student Priorities

Contents

Overview

Project Pitch Videos

Strategic Priorities

Encourage student Awareness and Involvement on Campus

Create an Innovation, Commercialization, and Entrepreneurship (ICE) Center

Incorporate Diversity Representation

Install BearBoards throughout campus.

Product Development Center

Design Thinking Workshops

Alumni Student Mixer

Expose more STEM students to Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Increase Student-Driven Commercialization

Local partnerships that will expose students to industrial and entrepreneurial skills through projects designed by members of the local tech community.

Morgan Konnect

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