Resource:How to convince engineering faculty to teach their classes in the innovation space

Establish a relationship with university leaders

•    Intro (short paragraph on why you needed this connection)

Why get a teacher to teach in the innovation space?  It gives them more flexibility, allows them to work on collaborative problem solving, and fosters a different learning environment. 

Plus it promotes your design room/club.      

•    People (who you wanted to connect with)

Great Ideas: Target the professor who is already pushing boundaries.  Go for the professor who everyone hates because they are willing to step on people’s toes.  Get a professor who is ready to do something different.

 It may help to look for a professor who is teaching in a classroom that everyone hates (far off campus, old, etc.).  They will be happy to relocate.

And after you get one, your value goes up exponentially.  Others will follow.      

•    Materials (what supporting data or materials you brought with you to meetings)

•    Process (what steps you took and who you interacted with)

Seek out the professors listed above.  The renegade, the person who is not scared to get into a little bureacratic battle.  Talk to them, talk to the people from the registrar or whoever is in charge of room changes, etc.  

Then, be ready to actually get in there and rearrange the room yourself.  The point of the DEC (design room) was to enhance collaboration.  Adam and his team would go in before a class and personally line up the room in a big circle to help facilitate that type of environment.      

•    Timeline (how much time it took from idea to connection)

 One of the big challenges was creating the room on a $600 budget.  After that, it really was “If you build it, they will come.”  Didn’t take more than a month to start gaining traction. 

 Adam said that they never stopped pushing.  From the start, they just needed to establish themselves as a group that was serious.  After that they really didn’t have too many issues.          

•    Results (what happened as a result of your connection)

After a few teachers taught their classes in the club, more people got involved in the design engineering collaborative.  More people were interested in using the room and it was a good opportunity to show off the space. 

The first class there legitimized the club/space- now student organizations are using it, professors are holding office hours there, etc.

•    Follow-up (what plans exist to maintain that connection)

Hopes to soon have an open calendar for the space to let people know what is going on there.  Goal is for everything to take place in that space from student organizations to classes to design competitions.      

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•    Lessons learned and tips for others (what worked and what didn’t, and your recommendations for others)