Resource:How to deliver a uifresh experience for 200 first year students
We learn by sharing our knowledge. The freshmen join the college with great enthusiasm and are very eager to learn new things.
Introducing the concept of innovation to the freshmen will be very helpful for them. The uifresh (University Innovation Freshmen) initiative was launched by Epicentre’s University Innovation Fellows in March 2015 as part of a White House collection of initiatives during the 5th Annual White House Science Fair. Leaders and Fellows from 10 schools committed to exposing incoming students at their schools to entrepreneurship, design thinking, creativity and innovation as part of freshmen orientation. As uifresh is much about innovative and creative skills, sharing of uifresh experience with the first-year students will help them a lot to bring out the hidden talents in them. It also helps to make major innovative changes in the college.
Twenty higher education institutions are welcoming their incoming students in a unique way as part of a national STEM initiative called uifresh.
We came across Krusha shah who is a part of STEM and learnt more about uifresh. Krusha shah is a non-resident Indian(NRI) who born in Gujarat and later moved on to Chicago. She is now pursuing her under graduation in the stream of mechanical engineering. She is a university innovation fellow and also a teaching assistant for a class staunched to freshmen engineers at the Saint Louis university(SLU). she is mentor for sixty mechanical engineering students (i.e.20 students per section). She is an optimist. She is passionate about accepting challenges. She is very much dedicated to her work.
She managed to deliver her uifresh experience to 200 first year students with the help of her two more University Innovation Fellows. She motivated the freshers by sharing her experience of uifresh In their classrooms with of help of professors. She conducted workshops to give the freshers much clarity about the program. She also conducted hands on session by creating groups, thereby attracting fresh students towards uifresh and making them to know a lot about it. Apart from this Participating schools are organizing a wide variety of specially designed freshmen orientation activities, workshops and courses including the following:
· On August 17, Universidad del Turabo held the activity “Melting Pot Fresh Faculty.” Professors of freshman seminar classes were introduced to entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity and the design thinking methodology. The goal was to help faculty develop confidence in designing experiences and projects to help their students develop skills in these areas.
· On August 24, North Dakota State University hosted the activity “I3: Ignite Innovative Ideas.” Students relaxed on hammocks and discussed innovative and entrepreneurial activities on campus and in the community. They then took part in a design thinking challenge to create a best and worst feature or change to their dorms, which helped them learn to identify the needs of their “customers” and how their ideas presented solutions.
· On August 25, William Jewell College hosted the “Creativity & Innovation Orientation Workshop”
· On August 26, Michigan Technological University held the activity “Chill Out with #uifresh” with 1,300 incoming first-year students from all majors.
· On August 29, James Madison University held the “Madison Engineering Launch,” the official welcome for all incoming first-year students in engineering.
· On September 3, University of Minnesota will host the event “Dare to Dream!” during College Welcome Day with all 1,100 incoming science and engineering freshmen.
· On September 9, Union College will host an event called “STEM-UP,”
By this interactive session and some personal search done by our team we came across many ways of conveying our experiences to the fresher students and also we came to know that by conducting workshops we can convey our message more effectively.
EDITED BY:
http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/RanjithaBomma
http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/KOLLU_NISHKALA
http://universityinnovation.org/wiki/Manasa_kakarla
