Priorities:Swarthmore College Student Priorities
At Swarthmore College, we have experienced an apparent lack of opportunity for socially minded entrepreneurs. As such, we will be working with faculty, students, and other institutional partners to develop Swarthmore’s new Social Innovation Lab. The following individual projects will all be operated within the Social Innovation Lab. Note: We believe we have failed if only Swarthmore students and faculty are using the Innovation Lab. Therefore, community engagement is essential to our mission.
Strategic Priority #1 (Omri 2017): Incentivise Swarthmore students to engage in social entrepreneurship and innovation
Given Swarthmore student’s passion for social change, there is immense potential to harness this energy and channel it towards social innovation.Currentlyhowever, the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Swarthmore does not provide enough opportunity (or incentive) for students to engage in social entrepreneurship/innovation.
Project: Social Innovation Fellowship. The Social Innovation Fellowship is broken down as follows:
Facilitation
- Internal stakeholders - I will be facilitating design-thinking workshops for student groups and faculty committees on campus. I have already facilitated a design-thinking session for the faculty/student committee on Student Health and Wellbeing, and there is increasing institutional interest in participating in these workshops.
- External stakeholders - entrepreneurially minded non-profits/other organizations in surrounding Swarthmore area (mainly Philadelphia and Chester). I have already established numerous relationships with these external partners (most of which work with youth), all of whom are excited at the prospect of engaging with Swarthmore’s Innovation Lab. I will be working with these organizations to host either workshops or events focused on design-thinking, presentation/pitching techniques, etc.
Short term student engagement
- Students will enroll in ‘Entrepreneurship Fieldwork and Internship’ (half-credit), which will last for 6-8 weeks. They will be paired with an internal or external stakeholder, and work with them on a specific project.
- Ex: For students interested in film and media studies, they could be paired with a non-profit partner in Philadelphia that provides youth with equipment and skills to make their own films. The student could potentially serve as a mentor for 6-8 weeks, while also providing additional resources/information to help the organization.
Social Innovation Fellowship
- Students will enroll in Professor Denise Crossan’s Social Entrepreneurship in Principle and Practice course (1 credit). The course will cover the fundamentals ofdesign-thinking, and other innovative tools/techniques. Students in this course will then have the option to be paired with regional or international stakeholders. Professor Crossan and I (faculty head of the Social Innovation Lab), have already established partners in:
- Northern Ireland
- Columbia
- Japan
- England
- Spain
- Iraq
- A potential future spinoff would be that these students would then receive funding to travel to their respectivepartners,and engage in a summer internship in which they would be able to continue their project
Ultimately, I believe that attracting more students to participate in the growing social innovation initiative on campus revolves heavily around credit. Being able to receive credit, while engaging in an applied learning project, is something that entices many students.
Strategic Priority #2.1 (Natasha 2017): Make Entrepreneurship Tangible
It is really important to us that “social entrepreneurship” is more than just a nebulous idea at Swarthmore. We want to go beyond the buzzwords, and give students an opportunity to actually apply all that they learn about design thinking. During the Stanford course, we have really appreciated the focus on prototyping - weplangive Swarthmore a workable “prototype” of a successful social enterprise on campus.
Project: Student Run Social Enterprise - Environmentally Sustainable Cafe
We plan to launch astudent run, environmentally sustainable café inside the social innovation lab. We plan to serve coffee, tea, espresso, and baked goods out of a small part of our makerspace. The café will be fully managed by students, with a focus on environmental stewardship--we will use all compostable materials and source our food locally and sustainably. Many new buildings are being constructed in the northern part of campus with no food nearby, so we hope that the café will serve an emerging need. When we talked to students about our idea, there was a lot of excitement around the café - there is no good coffee on campus, students told us, and they are really excited that the café is going to have an environmental focus.
We already are in communication with Therese Ton, a student baker selling her products at local stores, and Ben Stern, a coffee aficionado on campus.
Strategic Priority #2.2 (Hanan 2018): SupportingStudent LedInitiatives
A student-led cafe, previously known to students as Paces Cafe, was an occasional late night food option to students on campus. After years of growing, the cafe has taken on a new location, a bigger menu, and extended hours. Newly named as The Crumb Cafe, this late night eatery is open seven nights a week, offering a larger range of sandwiches, snacks, drinks, and meal items due to student access to and new use of the Sharples dining hall kitchen facility. The move has opened up additional opportunities for interested students to work at the cafe. The Crumb Cafe is also more accessible to all types of students on campus. Whereas the old cafe only accepted campus points, the renovated Crumb Cafe accepts a wide variety of meal plan options, such as Swat Points, Garnet Cash, Dining Dollars, and the late night meal swipe that every student has. Additionally, the Crumb Cafe is an environmentally sustainable cafe by using all compostable materials.
Issue & demonstrated need for support:
With the expansion of the cafe and the early closing of other late night food options, the Crumb Cafe has been experiencing an influx of student customers causing long lines, extended wait times for food, running out of menu items within an hour of opening, and an unorganized ordering/delivering food system. There is a lot of excitement around the expansion of the cafe and the cafe has hired many new students but has been struggling to serve a large student body.
Project:
- Design and Implement a “Crumb Cafe” App
- Streamline ordering process. Students can pre-order off the online menu and the app will give an estimated time that the food will be ready effectively decreasing the long wait times.
- Streamline the delivery process. The app can notify students when their food is ready (ie. at the burger shop, Shakeshack, customers are notified via a vibrating remote when their orders are ready).
- Streamline cafe-customer communications. The cafe quickly runs out of menu items that student most often order. Many students have expressed how disappointed they have been to enter the cafe, wait in line, and only find out about certain items running out when they are about to order. The app can notify students of what is currently available to order and what has run out.
- Secure funding for an increase in student staff
- With the option to order via the app and avoid the long wait lines, many more students may interact with The Crumb Cafe. This means that there will be a need for increased staffing - perhaps staff solely dedicated to online orders, and staff dedicated to in-person cafe orders.
- This will support many low-income students on campus looking for employment as well as to increase their skills. Working in a group setting develops one’s communication, ability to work in a team, and encourages initiative and motivation - skills that are transferable to any other job on or off campus.
- As more staff requires more funding so students can be paid, a grant can be proposed to the student government organization (SGO) and student budget committee (SBC) detailing the needs of the community and how additional staffing will address the needs.
Strategic Priority #3.1 (Mariam 2017): Develop spin-off opportunities to support more mature entrepreneurs at Swarthmore College by nurturing student enterprises/groups/projects/student groups using Impact Investing
Need: As a result of the Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship project mapping at Swarthmore College, we identified a dire lack of spin-off opportunities (3-5 years support plans) that would spur and scale projects that have survived the test of time.
The immediate need that we investigated is the scarcity of funding needed to scale the strategic and operational activities of a business/enterprise/organization/student groups that are past the initial forming stages of their venture.
Solution: Impact Investing Group
The goal of the Impact Investing project is to invest a fund (that will initially originate out of a grant/endowment from Swarthmore College). This fund will be initially invested by pro bono Swarthmore alumni investors while abiding by the social, governmental, environmental principles of Impact Investing. Over the course of a couple of years, returns on investments will be allocated to the spin-off fund that Swarthmore entrepreneurs can apply for. The returns generated from the investments will financially support more mature Swarthmore entrepreneurs at their spinout/scaling stages.
In parallel, students at the Swarthmore Investing club can gain educational and practical experience in investing by giving assistance to the pro bono Swarthmore alumni investors network. They will be the guardians of the Impact Investing fund. This educational partnership will secure a pipeline of socially minded-investors that are making returns for Swarthmore entrepreneurs.
As a result, the Impact Investing project will not only educate future socially-minded investors, but it will also incentivize young entrepreneurs to prove themselves and gain access to spin-off funding opportunities. The Impact Investing project willthereforebe a merit-based, socially-minded, and educational incentive for Entrepreneurship.
Stakeholders:
- Swarthmore Finance and Investment Office: will be key in securing the initial grant and endowment for the Impact Investing project.
- Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility: will connect mature Swarthmore entrepreneurs and project leaders to the Impact Investing project.
- Center for Innovation and Leadership: will educate and nurture Swarthmore entrepreneurs and project leaders in their initial entrepreneurial stages.
- Swat Careers: can be helpful in finding Swarthmore alumni who are willing to work pro-bono or train students on how to invest money.
- Swarthmore Alumni Office: can be helpful in their outreach to investors who are in the Swarthmore alumni network.
- Swarthmore Investment Club: will be exposed to best practices in Impact Investing. They will support and assist pro bono investors of the Impact Investing project. This educational experience will ensure the sustainability of the pro bono investor pipeline.
Strategic Priority #3.2 (Lamia 2018):Develop spin-off opportunities to support more mature entrepreneurs at Swarthmore College byconnecting these entrepreneurs to the resources needed for them to accelerate in the ‘real world’.
Though certain spin off opportunities do currently exist, they are not sufficient, and it is difficult for developing entrepreneurs to really grow and scale both through the resources offered as Swarthmore and beyond the school campus. The need for spin-off opportunities could most easily take the form of a program that connects certain budding entrepreneurs who have gone through earlier resources from the College to existing opportunities beyond the school.
Project:Swarthmore Entrepreneur in Residence Program
Objective
Help accelerate projects or business being run by current Swarthmore students or recent graduates by giving student entrepreneurs a space to develop their businesses on campus and access to resources needed to scale beyond Swarthmore.
Potential Components
- Business network - connection to established UX designers, marketing freelance, other entrepreneurs in the industry etc.
- Connection to real investors - alum network, potential opportunity to pitch in front of them
- Connection to other pitch competitions (including some that other students have already pitched at and have connections to) ex. Global Startup Ecosystem, University Startup World Cup,
- Scholarship opportunities to real business accelerators like Draper University, Y Combinator, 500 Startups etc. in San Francisco and elsewhere
- Funding for summer cohort in these accelerators as an additional option for "summer impact funding"
- Accepting credit for programs like Draper University towards an entrepreneurship course (Under Economics? Peace & Conflict Studies?) [longer term goal]
- Office space on campus for established student-run business - business address and temporary space for team establishment
Some of these resources may exist independently under different programs or as autonomous activities, but there is no formalised means of connecting them and centralising the steps for a mature entrepreneur to scale beyond Swarthmore.
Strategic Priority #4.1 (Michelle 2017): Make Entrepreneurship Collaborative Rather than Competitive
As college students, we are often told that we have to do a million things, from balancing classes to athletics to clubs. On top of our immense workload, we are often fed the notion that we have to "find our calling" in the next 4 years. In the midst of all of these insane expectations leveraged against us, we often forget is that what we truly need is a mentor-- someone who is there to support us and cheer us on, no matter what we do.
Project: TriConnect - Peer-to-peer mentoring website
TriConnect is a mentoring website that helps students in the Tri-College Consortium (Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr) tap into the untapped network of mentors, aka the amazing students that attend these three esteemed colleges. Students start by creating a profile, listing all of their affiliations (majors, clubs, interests etc.) and what they can offer mentorship in and what they are seeking to be mentored in (i.e. a CS student looking for someone more involved in the Tri-Co entrepreneurship environment). Once a profile is created, they can reach out to other students on the network to set up meals, attend events together etc.
The Impact of “TriConnect”: By creating a platform that directly fosters peer-to-peer mentorship, TriConnect hopes to not only empower individuals,but also shift school culture from one that is hyper-competitive and often cutthroat to one that is more collaborative and supportive. We hope that this will lead to benefits in student mental health and physical well-being, all the while cultivating student entrepreneurship and innovation.
Student Government Organization Committees
Swarthmore's SGO has many committees that handle bringing various student groups together in other to help move the campus community forward as a whole. As entrepreneurship opportunities become a high priority for students on campus, it would be beneficial for SGO to create a Standing Committee on Entrepreneurship, which would involve weekly meetings with the leaders of the entrepreneurial groups of campus.
Cross-Group Peer to Peer Mentorship
While Michelle's Peer-to-Peer program focused on resources available to the greater TriCo community, I am interested in fostering collaboration within the institution by establishing a similar mentoring program to connect members across the aforementioned entrepreneurial groups. By doing so, we would be able to encourage the sharing of ideas and resources across these organizations and reduce the existing beauricraticlandscape of entrepreneurship and innovation that exists at Swarthmore College.
Strategic Priority #5.1 (Gaeta 2019): Initiate, Collaborate, Educate
As we seek to expand social innovation work and involve our community both on campus and locally with the educational opportunities outlined in our mission, collaboration with peer schools has unequivocally shown to be a necessary- vital intricacy that can bolster a wide array of program success on our campus. The college encourages communication with both Haverford College and Bryn Mawr College as they have been affiliated for several decades as part of the "Quaker Consortium" or Tri-College Network among our schools. From lab research affiliations to official programs such as the Tri-Co Philly initiative, we feel it is imperative to use the existing relationship with these schools to increase the presence of cross-campus social innovation endeavors.
To do so, we propose that this collaboration serves as a mechanism to strengthen the prior and current student priorities that are outlined on this page. That is, we acknowledge that collaboration among our colleges is, though indeed important, more appropriately serve as secondary landscape foresight. Nonetheless, the following steps outline our primary next steps to begin these programs fruition.
1. Formal proposal to social engagement/ entrepreneurship stakeholders at each school. This will begin a conversation and introduce the three schools to a shared vested interest in advancing student engagement.
2. Schedule a student interest meeting on each campus to attract students from each school into a setting/forum with possible guest speakers or events that can begin to lay a framework for a relationship among the school's innovators.
3. Follow up and strict deadlines will be a vital component of this mission. We will have a hard deadline for December 15th to achieve step 1 and begin the process of scheduling the events for part 2.
4. Continous community feedback from all three campuses is not to be overlooked throughout this proposal. The most fundamental tenant of this work is giving one another a voice- and- embracing this priority will be at the forefront of this collaboration involving email surveys, classroom engagement, presentations, and similar means of allowing community members to share their opinions on the program.
Strategic Priority #5.2 (Emma 2019): Making the I&E Community More Accessible
We have noticed that a lot of our programs on campus that encourage innovation and entrepreneurship assume that students already know about or are interested the topic. We want to invite students from a broader set of backgrounds to participate in I&E by creating programs geared towards educating students about the basics of what I&E is and how it connects to their own lives so that they might be more likely to participate in other existing programs in the future.
We envisioned setting up workshops in casual spaces all around campus (lounges in dorms, common spaces in academic buildings, the dining hall, etc.) where interested participants could easily meet and passers-by could get drawn in spontaneously. To add to the welcoming atmosphere, there might be snacks or other incentives to stop by and join in. There might be literature (pamphlets or flyers) as a visual aid to the learning process, as well as some structured topics to help get conversation flowing. The idea is to ease students into I&E by identifying problems they would like to solve and how design thinking could relate to that, but not necessarily asking them to start solving them in that setting. In this way the workshops are low-stakes and hopefully less intimidating to someone who doesn't identify themselves as already part of the I&E community.
Strategic Priority #5.3 (Ray 2019): Increase Outreach
We believe that there are many students on campus who would benefit from learning about innovation and entrepreneurship. We want to increase our outreach and bring in students who are not already involved with innovation or entrepreneurship. Once these students are engaged and interested, they can connect more with the I&E resources that exist on campus.
In order to bring in these students, we will host TEDx talks on the theme of innovation. It would include speakers who have demonstrated significant innovation within their respective fields to talk about what innovation means to them, what kind of process it involves, why it matters, etc. We would like to display different applications of innovation principles so students can see where these principles are relevant to their own interests. Since Swarthmore students tend to be passionate about social issues, we chose the following speaker types that would appeal to that demographic: social entrepreneurs, activists, musicians/artists, and sustainability technologists. With this project we hope to engage a wide variety of students - especially students who are not already involved with I&E at Swarthmore.
Strategic Priority #6.1 (Edward 2020): Start Innovating Earlier
This year has been an important year for reflection and looking at trends. Although the term “social entrepreneurship” has become less vague for Swarthmore students idea since I was a Freshman, there is still work to be done. One of the problems we see is as follows: 1)It is difficult for Swarthmore students to focus on innovation in their earlier years due to their liberal arts requirements; and 2)Liberal arts students are facing a tougher job market that requires more experience of design thinking than ever before. 1) and 2), when together, present a growing problem that we intend to focus on. During this Stanford course, we have upgraded our design thinking skills, and by learning to prototype effectively we feel ready to take this problem on.plan
Project: Bringing the Liberal Arts ethic into Career Services
We plan to launch astudent run, new student-run set of resources as part of Swarthmore's Career Services department. We plan to employ students to find short, part-time job opportunities for every subject matter and to publish a weekly email blast. We also plan to work with Swarthmore alumni to produce a private selection of shorter internships. This will allow Swarthmore students, particular newer Swarthmore students, to gain valuable skills and work experience whilst taking classes. When we talked to students about our idea, there was a lot of excitement - the career services department focuses on Juniors and Seniors, students told us, and they are really excited to learn critical skills (such as design thinking) and to lessen their anxiety about finding an internship/job after graduation.
Strategic Priority #7.1 (Sofia 2021): OurSwat Game
The COVID-19 pandemic has widened the gap between older students who were on campus before and new, younger students who have not experienced what full campus life feels like. This has led to issues in communication, knowledge, and isolation, as newer students struggle to fully adapt to campus culture. Therefore, I propose that a virtual (video) game that encompasses campus life would help to bridge the knowledge gap and facilitate participation between students. This would include mini challenges for different areas of campus that teach players about different spaces and where they can go, chat rooms, and also instructional videos that can help teach students how to adjust to campus. This would also include a challenge on design thinking, facilitated by the space in the game that occurs in the Center for Innovation and Leadership, in order to help prepare students for important design skills. By including this in a game format, it will be more engaging to students that are burnt out from the past year and a half of online classes than a zoom or other format.
Strategic Priority #7.2 (Ipeknaz 2021): Industry Courses
Since I have come to Swarthmore, something I have heard students complain about again and again is that courses we take in the college are too theoretical and they do not prepare us for internships/jobs within the industry itself. Implementing a hybrid course that aims to teach students concepts actually in-use within the industry of interest and matching them with shadowing/mentoring opportunities could help students feel more prepared in applying for jobs and long term internship opportunities. One department that this idea could be especially useful for is the computer science department. We could create a course where students could learn about current tools and software used to develop apps currently, they can develop their own ideas for apps using the design thinking process, they can be matched with industry professionals to shadow for a few weeks and then they can start implementing their own ideas with mentors who can help them think about technical skills or more conceptual ideas.
Strategic Priority #7.3 (Jackie Le 2021): Liberal Arts Consortium
Swarthmore College is known for its academic rigor, which places a lot of stress on students as they struggle to find a balance between their social life and classes. This balance has been exacerbated by the virtual learning setting and the transition from virtual to in-person. Despite the few resources available to students, they are either too busy with their work to utilize them or do not notice them.
This is not a solution, but rather a source of interest that may open up opportunities for solutions to be implemented. This approach involves collaborating with other liberal arts colleges (LAC) in the LAC network. By sending out invitations and surveying students from other LACs about their experiences with mental health, academic workload, and resources available to them, we may learn how Swarthmore College can improve its own student ecosystem. It is from these correspondences that data can be gathered and synthesized to produce results that can be used as an impetus for administrators and students at Swarthmore College to prioritize this issue, of which freshmen and international students are most affected by.
Collaboration will also occur with members of the Aydelotte Foundation, whose focus centers around LACs as institutions and the direction they are heading towards over time. Questions such as:
Wonder where Liberal Arts is going as an idea? Interested in the wide landscape of higher education at these challenging times? Thinking about structural inequality in higher education?
are relevant to issues these students are facing and can be used as a springboard from which to discuss resources that may be offered to improve the quality of life for students at Swarthmore College.
Again, this strategic priority focuses more on expanding the network from which resources can be pooled and utilized for students.
Strategic Priority #7.4 (Shirley Liu 2021): Swarthmore Alumni Webpage Improvement
One of the most common impressions people have about liberal art college is what students learn in school could not be applied well in industry or life post-graduation in general. Although it's not at all the case, there is indeed a gap between academia and industry faculty and students are concerned about. Alumni resource is very helpful in bridging student's academic work and interest and the industry since they are people who have gone through similar experiences and could provide the most updated insight of a specific industry. There is already an alumni network database students can access via a webpage, which stores alumni's name, occupation, major at Swarthmore, internship/externship opportunities they can provide, interest, etc. However, students at Swarthmore were not the most familiar with this webpage because it is 1) not the most advertised and 2) relatively hard to process and organize the search results. To improve the user experience of the webpage, I'm envisioning a map that utilizes the current alumni information in the database and represents it in the format of a map that shows where the alumni are, what company they're working for, what kind of opportunity they can provide, etc. This idea is inspired by the off-campus studies website, which employs a map to represent all the study-abroad programs and exchange programs while providing information on past participants of the programs.
The stakeholders for this project would be: career service faculties, ITS team, alumni, and students. Some current constraints are: 1) Whether the school would like to invest time and money to better the current alumni network webpage; 2) How busy the career services faculty and ITS staff s and whether we would be adding a huge workload on their plate; 3) How much information does alumni want to provide regarding their current professional life and whether they're willing to constantly update the information; 4) How many people are able to dedicate their time to develope this webpage and how are we going to pay for their work
Suppose we have overcome all the obstacles, these are the steps to realize this project: 1) Consult the off-campus studies office to see what they did/needed for the map representation of programs 2) Hold a stakeholder meeting to set a budget and time frame for the development 3) Talk with spear-headed people from career services and ITS to map out the timeline 4) Secure testers to provide feedback for the prototypes of the webpage 5) Check-in with all parties monthly to monitor the progress
Strategic Priority #8.1 (Atticus Hempel 2022): Swarthmore Constructive Criticism Webpage
When starting out on this project there was no clear winner in terms of most pressing issues to solve at Swarthmore. Now of course there were some high-frequency concerns like issues with the food at our dining hall or having too much homework, but in terms of realistically relevant concerns that could be solved in a one-year time span, the most prevalent concern by far was that people had concerns. After realizing this and taking some time to think I realized that this fact in and of itself was a problem that could be solved.
At Swarthmore and probably at all colleges, the students have preferences regarding how the school is run and oftentimes these preferences are not always listened to and understood. Sometimes these preferences are intangible or can't be understood, but other times these preferences are relevant and should be acted upon, so it became my idea to develop a system through which the administration at Swarthmore can have an accurate picture of what problems matter, what preferences students have with their school, and the concerns the students hold.
There are, of course, issues regarding this aim. For example, depending on who holds access to what has been decided to be a webpage could matter a lot in terms of what gets done and what does not. Also whether this webpage is used at all whether by the faculty or the students in incredibly important. Finally, what sort of responses and engagement this webpage receives is also super important because a bunch of college kids posting unproductive criticism of their school to the administration does not seem conducive towards a healthy, productive environment and I don't want response bias.
So, over these past six weeks, how has my idea developed? Well, in short the answer is extensively. Not only has our team created a prototype that has been tested on students and will continue to be developed in order to properly address the aforementioned issues, but we have also learned a ton more about what it means to socially innovate on a college campus. So in summary, both our ideas and how project has developed, and in the future we plan on continuing this growth by utilizing the design thinking process.
Strategic Priority #8.2 (Trinh Nguyen 2022): Pre-college courses
Status quo: Swarthmore students come from a lot of different backgrounds. Low-income students often don’t get access to certain resources in high school that prepare them for college, especially STEM classes. For example, many intro engineering classes with no prerequisites only gloss over the basics of using MATLAB, coding, etc., leaving these students unprepared to succeed and reach their full potential. As a consequence, students are discouraged from pursuing some fields of study because they think they’re not smart enough, which is often false. Since most low-income students are also in marginalized groups, this directly contributes to the current lack of diversity in STEM professions. We need to create equity in the college environment, not just equality - we must focus on uplifting those who are the most harmed by the systemic racism/sexism/xenophobia.
Methods: Create pre-college level courses. It is challenging to put into place extra courses - most colleges already suffer from the lack of faculty to teach required classes. Therefore, I propose that Swarthmore provide pre-college level courses that students can take remotely. This can be in the form of subscriptions to online courses or in-person evening classes led by upperclassmen. For the online courses, students can opt into taking them over the break before the main course. During the semester, the in-person evening classes help provide additional support for struggling students. A lot of pre-class materials are usually trivial, like navigating a tool, refreshing on learned concepts, etc. Therefore, these pre-college courses will not be too much of a burden on students, and won’t be counted as credits.
Stakeholders: The STEM faculty, Registrar, and students (upperclassmen as teachers, and underclassmen as students).
Strategic Priority #8.3 (Ari Mosqueda 2022): Resource Navigation for FLI Students
Swarthmore College has a plethora of resources for students ranging from academics to funding to career and life after college. These include Career Services, the Writing Associates Program, Academic Advisers, Student Academic Mentors, as well as more concrete resources such as the Center for Innovation and Leadership summer funding that allows students to find internships of interest to them without worrying about other costs, as well as the Lang Center’s summer funding opportunities. However, with so many resources available to students, it is often difficult to decipher which of these resources are most effective and helpful.
Moreover, navigating the large amount of resources available can be more overwhelming and difficult for First-Generation and Low-Income students, and often these resources are hidden behind the multiple pages and tabs of Swarthmore’s website or even in the hundreds of emails that are sent out weekly. A proposed solution could be to create a more centralized resource site based on student experience in order to expand current students’ knowledge on resources available. Additionally, knowing and understanding how students are already able to navigate the resources on campus would be helpful in moving forward on how to make resources more accessible to all students.
The stakeholders for this project would include the Swat FLI staff (Dean Karen Henry, Jasmine Owens, and Rosemary Tourish), as well as the head staff from the academic and career support programs such as Career Services and Academic Advising. Student feedback from both those who have felt they have adequately navigated Swarthmore’s resources, as well as those who felt they haven’t, would also be extremely important to this project. A constraint of this project could arise in measuring how well resources are being used, but ultimately qualitative feedback from surveys (about students’ experiences) could help us overcome this obstacle.
Strategic Priority #8.4 (Hojune Kim 2022): Swarthmore Student-centric Course Scheduler
I believe that the most fundamental right of students is to learn what they want. But over decades, higher educational institutions have ignored these basic rights by releasing their next semester’s course schedule without listening to their student population. As a result, most students have to drop one or more classes that they originally wanted to take due to the course conflict. This phenomenon applies regardless of country.
Our SSCS get surveys from the students on their top 4 courses that they want to take for the next semester. Also, SSCS takes surveys from the faculties about their available time for lectures, and by combining these two, SSCS finds the optimal schedule that both minimizes the course conflict and fits the possible schedule of the faculties. Programming the approximate scheduling algorithm is expected to be the most challenging part of this project, but convincing faculties and administration offices can be possible obstacles as well.
Strategic Priority #9.1 (Emma Lang, Angie Kwon, Olivia Medeiros-Sakimoto 2023): Non-academic community spaces
Most of the community spaces on campus are academic based (ie. most of the lounges that exist are for department students). There are not many opportunities/spaces for students to relax and organize student life around. There should a dedicated prominent space just for student life/engagement where students can develop community rapport without the academic pressure. Currently a student center is being built out of the old Sharples building, and we can strive to truly make it a student space and maximize the space's potential.
Strategic Priority #9.2 (Emma Lang, Angie Kwon, Branley Mmasi 2023): Utilizing our diversity
Swarthmore has a highly diverse student body, but institutionally and systematically it is still prominently white and upper-middle class. Though this may not be a significant problem on its own, nonetheless it should be rectified and supplemented with other opportunities and offices to ensure true diverse development on campus. There is already the Inclusive Excellence Fellows initiative that works to promote diversity, equity and inclusion on campus, but programs such as this should be advertised to incoming students more publicly and their achievements published to the entire school. The college as a whole should also strive to diversity goals in all departments, including the athletic department, which could benefit from diverse recruitment. The academic departments as well could enhance their programmings for minority students, such as for women in STEM fields, POC in STEM and social science fields, etc.
Strategic Priority #9.3 (Karina Flores, George Fang, Nana Asante 2023): Increased Community Outreach
Although Swarthmore is located in the suburbs of Philadelphia, it still has access to Philadelphia and resources from surrounding communities such as Chester PA. Swarthmore has already established connections with different organizations outside of Swarthmore, but this list is limited. In order to help improve this challenge there should be a increase in partnership between swarthmore, neighboring communities, and community organizations. This partnership will help foster closer relationships, help promote events on Swarthmore and neighboring communities, help spread knowledge on certain issues, and promote networking opportunities. In order to do this, there should be more student involvement in community events, and the reach of current community outreach should be broadened with more technical tools such as a website to browse volunteer organizations that you can access with your swarthmore account.
Strategic Priority #9.4 (Branley Mmasi, Olivia Medeiros-Sakimoto, George Fang 2023): Teaching Entrepreneurship in Academics
We hope to shift the responsibility of teaching entrepreneurship at Swat from school organizations on campus to a specific department that can act as a catalyst, working with the registrar's office to establish an entrepreneurship minor (gaining academic credit for entrepreneurship-related courses). In order to expose more of our community to design thinking, we will ask students to work with professors to determine what they want to learn about entrepreneurship in academics. Additionally, we could host a guest lecture series inviting local local entrepreneurs to share their experiences, challenges, and advice, even assigning real-world projects where students must identify a market need and develop a business plan.
Strategic Priority #10.1 (Ye Lin, Ainsley Jane Tambling 2024): Swarthmore Career Little Sibs and Big Sibs
Having a older mentor could be very helpful for underclassmen coming into college. For class choices, opportunities on/off campus, and general advice throughout college. Having this person you can continuously talk to can be a very valuable relationship throughout their time at Swarthmore. They, then in turn, can become that upperclassmen that help incoming students. This can help bridge the gap of the struggle that many students can't find opportunities can get more hands-on experiences. As this program grows, this will build better connections on campus which will promote campus community and growth for the student body to become better leaders as they are open to more opportunities.
Strategic Priority #5 (Yeimely, Denyse 2024)
Although students have a variety of resources available to them to improve their work experience, we notice there is a lack of engagement. We aim to empower students in their professional journeys by strengthening connections with career services. For example, holding resume-building workshops and other career development opportunities to increase student participation and engagement.Or finding different methods of outreach content to engage with students and provide them with information regarding the opportunities that are available to them.
Strategic Priority #6 (Noah, Trisha 2024)
A significant population of the student body prioritizes exercise as a part of their well-being. However, part of ensuring that exercise produces a positive effect on well-being is by maintaining physical health. Working with the athletics department, our strategic priority is to increase access to recovery resources for exercise. This includes access to nutritious snacks following exercise, a regularly available masseuse, or more equipment in the gym. The hope is that a strengthening of these resources provides more readily available access to optimal recovery, therefore enhancing well-being.
Cynthia, Kilin (2024)
Right now, peer mentoring services at Swarthmore exist across multiple systems, which creates unnecessary barriers for students who need support. Each program – Writing Associates, SAMs, LCAs, career advisors, departmental peer tutors – operates independently, making it difficult for students to find the help they need and book appointments. A centralized system that brings all peer-to-peer mentoring options together would allow students to access these resources with ease, reducing confusion and increasing usage. This would not only improve academic performance but also foster a more connected and supportive campus community.
Related Links
2024 Swarthmore College Fall Landscape Canvas
Related Links
Swarthmore College Student Priorities
2019 Swarthmore University Innovation Fellows
2018 Swarthmore University Innovation Fellows
Hanan Ahmad
Cassandra Stone
Lamia Makkar
2017 Swarthmore University Innovation Fellows
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