Priorities:Ohio Northern University Student Priorities

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Overview

Ohio Northern University is an independent university in Ada, Ohio. ONU is known for their undergraduate education experience with research being the foundation to ONU's experiential education. The unique collaboration between professors and students in research yields countless opportunities for progress, as well as, opportunity for innovation. The two key components missing between the colleges on ONU's campus to catalyze a greater level of innovation and entrepreneurship are communication and collaboration. The following proposed strategies will create a greater awareness of I & E on campus. 

Listed below are the priorities and tactics all University Innovation Fellows from Ohio Northern have conceptualized in their processes. These are included to show the progression and history of the UIF program at ONU. 

Project Pitch Video

Spring 2019

Spring 2016

Spring 2015

Strategy #1: Help Students Understand Why Failure is Important

Some students feel as if they are set up to fail in certain small projects in their Foundations of Design Class. The purpose of these projects is to help students understand why failure is important. Even after students were told about this purpose, they still did not feel as if they had learned anything from this.

Tactic #1: Create an Assignment for New Students to Help Them Fully Understand the Importance of Failure

Step 1: Just like in previous years, give student a small project to complete during class in which the instructions do not have enough information to complete the project succesfully, resulting in many students' failure. 

Step 2: After their initial failure, have students complete a reading assignment or attend a presentation on the importance of failure. Have the students refelct and give examples of why failure is important in their future careers. 

Step 3: Give students a second project which is similar to the initial project. After learning about why failure is important, students will be more likely to ask the important questions needed to finish the project successfully.

Strategy #2: Help Students to Manage their Time

Many college student an adult fail to manage their time. as a result, they fall behind in their work, feel stressed, and don't complete tasks to the best of their ability. The purpose of this project to to teach students how to view the time that they have, analyze what needs to get done, and acomplish those tasks using skilled they've learned.

Tactic #1: Time Management Workshop

In this event, students will attend a workshop that will go throught the steps of effectively managing time. This workshop can be a held by the library or professional student organizations.

Those that attend the workshop will recieve an excel spreed sheet with tabs that can be printed to help organize their schedule and priorities.

Tactic #2: Time Management in First Year Engineering Orientation Class

In this event, lession on how to manage time will be available to first-year Engineering Orientation classes with a weekly homework assigment due until the end of the semester. It would be to plan out the week which would be due that monday and a record of what actually was done due at the end of the week. It would be a completion grade that will help the student to be more concious of their time and organize themselves.

Strategy #3: Create opportunities for efficient communication across campus (Spring 2017 and Fall 2019)

Numerous faculty and students have expressed a lack of a college to college communication which is a large inhibitor to the channel of progress. The colleges should have seamless communication of research, opportunities, and ideas between them leaving an opportunity for multidisciplinary collaboration.

Tactic #1: Hold Meetings Between Active Professors and Students from all Departments

Meeting 1: The first meeting will be just to identify the needs of each college and what they want help accomplishing. We can achieve this by doing brainstorming activities and spending time talking one on one. The most important part of the first meeting is that everyone becomes comfortable identifying the needs and desires of their department. After needs have been identified we can split into groups and all work on solutions to the problems presented

Meeting 2: After spending time working on solutions, each group will present their solution to the whole group. This will not only help us fulfill the needs of all departments but it will also build relationships across the college of students and professors from various colleges.

Meeting 3:  Once the solutions have been presented to the whole group, everyone will be able to vote on which one is the best solution, and if there are two, both can and will be implemented to help solve each department's problem(s).

These meetings will then continue between the active professors and students continually improving the college experience for everyone all while solving the problems departments cannot face on thier own.

Tactic #2: Roleplay different Student to Teacher and Student to Student Scenarios

  1. Role playing and Skits! - Do with students in small groups!
    1. Scenarios involving interactions with other Teachers and Students
      1. Student to Teacher
        1. Help Understanding problem
        2. Conflict with Another Student
        3. Improving Grade
      2. Student to Student
        1. Asking to study together without it seeming weird
        2. Asking another student for help
  2. Ask the Big Questions
    1. What worked?
      1. Why did it work?
    2. What didn’t work?
      1. What could you improve so it can?
      2. Afterwards, follow up with an email poll to see how helpful it was, and what other questions topics might need to be discussed

Strategy #4: use interdisciplinary relationships to spread I&E campus wide (Spring 2017 & 2019)

Many students have expressed their desire to actually participate in more activities that provide a greater experience related to not only their major, but other majors as well. The Landscape Canvas revealed current opportunities available for interdisciplinary collaboration through KEEN events, senior capstones, EPICS, and student clubs. The canvas also revealed areas where new opportunities must be created in order to support students in their ideas and untapped potential in innovation. Learning about how to effectively tie in other disciplines on-campus is key to generating momentum needed for innovation.

Tactic #1: Creating Interdisciplinary workshops/classes

Event 1:  In this event professors from different colleges will work together to build the curriculum for a class or workshop. For example, in a drafting class for the technology department a professor might work with a colleague from the art college to learn different techniques of making technical drawings more aesthetically pleasing. The tech college could even have the art professor in to teach on this topic.

Tactic #2: Encourage more awareness and participation for KEEN Challenges and ION ideation

ONU currently hosts KEEN Innovation challenges on a semester basis. The KEEN Challenges are centered on a different challenge each time requiring the application of innovation with the supplied materials students need to complete the presented challenge. The KEEN Innovation challenges are a great introduction to innovation for students on campus. The challenges will be utilized as the gateway for students gaining an understanding of innovation. An ONU group, ION, currently holds Ideation sessions focused on helping students tap into their creative side to design space and furniture for the college. These Ideation sessions can be very helpful in fostering I&E and are severely under utilized.

Tactic #3: Generating more participation in the EPICS Program by offering general education tags with the course

The EPICS program currently allows students to apply engineering principles in community service locally and internationally. But, too often students have to take other courses that will fulfill their general education requirments and will not have the option to take the EPICS course. If these courses could be embedded with interdisciplinary education then General Tags could be created allowing more students to take these courses.


Tactic #4: Working with professors to create more interdisciplinary projects

Much like Tatic #1, this tatic creates workshops/classes by informing other departments with how to better meet some of the other departments' needs. However, instead of only informing each department, each department will create a cross disciplinary project for the students to complete during the school year that will make sure that two different departments work side-by-side completing and meeting a need/task.  The increase in interaction between the various departments by meeting a need will stengthen the relationship between them.

Strategy #5: Creating how-to events that utilize any resources on campus (Spring 2017)

Many students expressed their desire for being more familiar with applications or resources that are available to them. Additionally, students of all majors can partake in these events. For example, a chemistry student interested in engineering could learn about engineering related software applications, theory etc. The goal is to create a program on campus that makes every possible resource available to students. This will make them better equipped to not only exceed the university's standards, but also make great strides in professional experience at an undergraduate level.

Tactic #1: Provide monthly workshops where students can learn about various resources and tools

These monthly workshops, will teach students about software and resources used for their majors, as well as, software/resources that other majors use. Within these workshops, experiential learning will be the driving force in ensuring that students feel confident enough to take their knowledge to the next step in implementing their ideas to actual projects.

Tactic #2: Advertising professional speakers at ONU to the student body

Countless professionals come to Ohio Northern and speak with students. Often, these speaking events have low turn out. The goal is to get students and faculty together to brainstorm ways in which the vast majority of students will be aware of the speakers and understand the value of these speaking events. This tactic will also be a networking opportunity for both students and professionals.

Strategy #6: Create a mentor program for the University Innovation Fellows Program on-campus (Spring 2018)

Tactic #1: Connecting current fellows with new students

In order to keep the momentum of the University Innovation Fellows Program on-campus, current fellows should have at least one mentee that is an academic year or more lower than them. In these mentee relationships, it will be the responsibility of the fellow to share knowledge and resources that the underclassman fellow will need to make an impact during their time here, while also keeping the program active. Furthermore, the mentors will share their resources and past experiences in order to help the new Fellows increase the effectiveness of the UIF group on campus.

Initial Projects of Focus (Spring 2016 & Spring 2018)

As a team, we plan to convert the Tinker Lab into a maker space that is able to not only better serve the engineering students, but also begin serving all students. Also, we plan to create more study friendly spaces around the entire campus, not only one college and not only inside, we plan to create a study space outside avaliable for everyone whenever they need/want it. This new study space will also double as a relaxing space for on-campus organizations to hold meetings outside as well. Additionally, we plan on starting a YouTube channel that highlights the work of innovators and changemakers on campus in order to raise the profile of innovators on campus and to generate excitement for innovation. We plan on creating effective ways for promoting KEEN and exactly what KEEN's goals are. We also hope to promote KEEN events at a greater level. Currently, our campus hosts KEEN Innovation Challenges each semester that introduce students to innovation through a series of new challenges. Secondly, we will work with the T.J. Smull College of Engineering to establish the Grand Challenge Scholars Program on-campus. Currently, the college of engineering has the EPICS program which gives students an opportunity for experiential learning and earn credit towards their coursework. We hope to pair the GCSP with the EPICS  program. We will also conduct research to see if EPICS can be taken by non-engineering majors, as well as, seeing if the EPICS courses can count as a general education requirement that can help students meet their core requirements, while having the opportunity to practice innovation and entrepreneurship. Lastly, We plan on establishing the UIF mentor program to recruit future UIF candidates and ensure that the momentum the University Innovation Fellows Program has on Ohio Northern's campus continues. Once, ONU has a team of UIF fellows from all of the colleges, the other projects mentioned in the previous sections can be enacted.

Strategy #7: Create more cross-disciplinary interactions throughout the campus (Spring 2019)

Tactic #1: Outdoor Study Space

Creating an outdoor study space for students in a local area is much needed on ONU's campus. Creating more spaces to study that are not in the academic buildings we believe will add more interactions of different majors. 

 Tactic #2: Bucketlist Wall

A bucket-listwall in Macintosh, the student center of campus, would help connect students outside of their major with other students who share similar interests that are not related to academics. These connections will then be fostered with group meetings.

Tactic #3: Pop-Up Classes

Pop-Up Classes that promote I&E would be a great addition to Ohio Northern's Campus. We would really be focusing on getting all majors involved by having different professors teach the classes. Getting professors from different departments such as; engineering, art, business, music, etc. would really promote the cross-disciplinary interactions we are looking for.

Tactic #4: Updating the current ONU App

The current ONU App is only used for looking at class rosters. In order to improve this app for the students we believed we needed a platform where they could interact on a campus wide level without the interruption of emails. This could be a way students can reach out for rides or other group activities and connect with those they may otherwise not interact with.

Related Links

Campus Overview

Fall 2019:

Andrew_Bergmann

Katelyn_Keckler

Matthew_Opara

Cassandra_Stuber

Fall 2018:

Todd Federici

Brittney Masters

Will Sierzputowski

Anne Major

Spring 2018:

Matthew Walker

Georgia Snelling

Kenton Jarvis

Connor Hull

Matthew Schweinefuss

Spring 2017:

Jared Emerson

Jeanne Graessle

Dan Musci

Cheyenne Raker

Spring 2016:

Adam Berry

Nathan Craft

Jonathan Szczerba

Spring 2015:

Alexandra Seda

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