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Priorities:University of Richmond Student Priorities

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'''University of Richmond -Strategic Priorities''''''2020/21''''''Project Name: Establishing Open and Comfortable Relationships Between Students and Professors to Foster I&E Discussions''Led By: Chloe Khoshand'''''Description: In order to stimulate conversations between students and professors within the I&E realm, students first need to be able to have comfortable relationships with their professors. Understanding this, this project will target open spaces in the classroom--especially during the initial introduction of the student to the course--and build opportunities for professors to establish a working relationship with their students. The need to foster these relationships arises from speaking with students around campus (both students on campus and those remote) to see what their thoughts are concerning their relationships with their professors. Key Tactics:Create a comprehensive list of the different clubs/organizations on campus and how they relate to different regions of study on campus; professors can use this list within their courses to encourage students to refer to these programs depending on their interestsEncourage professors to communicate with their students on a more frequent basis depending on the comfort level of the professor when it comes down to the form of communication (texting, emailing, Zoom video chatting, etc)Motivate professors to identify their day to day teaching methods at the beginning of each semester and make this information clear to students (ex: presenting a preliminary example of how the professor usually conducts their class whether they refer to PowerPoint notes daily, or employ video examples into their teaching)Emphasize to professors the value of explaining their teaching styles to students early in the semester to make aware to students what they should expect from the course and the professor '''Project Name: Student Approval Council for Class Creation/Process for Class Creation''Led By: Nichole Schiff'''''Description: The Student Approval Council for Class Creation/Process for Class Creation aims to give students a bigger voice in their education by providing them a platform to express their interests through the creation, alteration, and/or improvement of classes offered at the University of Richmond. This project is based on giving students the opportunity to pitch class ideas to a council of students and faculty that can help make these classes a reality. This can also include the alteration of higher level classes into ones that are open to more students (without so many prerequisites) so that they may explore this path of study. Why Do We Need a Council for Class Creation/Process for Class Creation? It is evident from research of speaking with students that many feel that their education is limited to the major path that they choose. Because of things such as prerequisites and limited course options without doing a major/minor in that subject, students feel that they are not given the opportunity to explore many of their interests. Even within major/minors, students feel that there are many topics the University does not have classes in. Even if the students' class idea does not become a reality, this will open the line of communication between students, faculty, and administrators in order to take student opinions into consideration when classes are being created, formed, and altered. Key Tactics:The Initial part of this project is the creation of a forum in which students can ideate, create, and propose their class idea. This can be accomplished through a checklist of objectives a student must follow before they are able to present their idea. This includes creating the idea (through a pre-designed form that they must fill out, having students get a set number of student signatures on their idea, as well as a professor who would be willing to teach their course/work with the student. An essential part of this project is the creation of a Student Approval Council who works with the current Faculty Class Creation Council in order for students to be involved in the class creation process. We believe this should comprise a diverse group of (upperclassmen) students to transcend across various majors/minors. They can apply to be a part of this committee through a form we work with the Faculty Council to create. The third important element of this idea is to create an event each semester or year that students can pitch their class ideas to the council after completing the initial steps. Their class idea can then be approved or rejected. If approved, the student will take next steps and begin to work with faculty and administrators in order to see if their idea could become an actual class, or if they could incorporate their ideas into a pre-existing class. '''Project Name: Virtual Innovation Space and raise awareness of innovation for all three schools''Led By: Penny Hu'''''Description: Problem -- students in schools other than the Business School feel that innovation and entrepreneurship doesn’t apply to them, innovations and entrepreneurship are not implemented in classes and students would love to have something innovation related in classes. There are no resources that are available for all students to help them if they need innovation skill guidance. The virtual Innovation Space is an online platform that students would be available for students to use when they need innovation skills for their innovation related projects in classes. The space will contain a mural-like space and framework on how design thinking works and there will be advisors and students available in the virtual space for students to meet and help generate ideas. Key Tactics: 1. The initial part of this project is working on projects in my team who works on introducing innovation into courses and identify what needs the students have for innovation connected with different classes2. Present the idea to the Provost Innovation Committee to get support for both human resources and technology resources for the space. For the human resources, we need an innovation focused faculty who would be able to do office hours in the virtual innovation space and students who have learned innovation and entrepreneurship skills for other students to utilize when they need it. For technology, we need a space for students to help them generate their ideas, put them down and help them filter which one would be beneficial for them, they can go on zoom office hours with the faculty directors if they can’t figure out anything through their process.3. When the space is developed, faculty would be able to include the link to the space on their syllabus and the director for the space can work to provide entrepreneurship speakers to talk about their innovation experiences and professors who have innovation related classes would also be able to let the director know that what help students may need for the class projects so they can help the students according to their needs.'''Project Name: New Departmental Framework for course and content development''Led By: Danny Anderson'''''Description: Professors find administrative obstacles to fulfilling their role of updating and improving their curricula and course offerings. New courses can take many years or decades to establish due to a lengthy process, and meaningful changes to content often require approval from administrators and are fully standardized across sections of introductory classes. As a result, changes to the content offered by a department are slow and inconvenient for faculty. Reorganizing the methods by which content changes can accelerate classroom innovation at the University of Richmond.Key Tactics:1. The proliferation of special topics courses is a necessary structural step in providing a culture of experimentation by faculty. Professor contracts require a set number of courses per semester (typically 2-3) and departments plan a year or two in advance what these courses will be. One course per two or three semesters, for each full time faculty, should be reserved for a special topics course, newly designed by the teaching faculty. This will allow departments to learn more quickly what courses they should be incorporating into their fields of study and would encourage faculty to seek ideas from students and their field.2. Departments have not coordinated innovation in their curricula, instead leaving professors individually to do the work and hopefully talk amongst each other. There needs to be a concerted effort at the department level to find areas for improvement of class offerings, and to meet objectives to that end. To this end, there should be established a biennial deliverable report from the chair of each department to the Provost’s office detailing the goals for innovation in the next two years, and the progress made on the previous two years’ goals. '''Project Name: Creating innovation and design thinking “capsule” courses for specific fields''Led By: Emma Johnson''''' Description: Although students at the university feel that they are gaining some knowledge of innovation and design thinking in their course curriculum, preliminary research has suggested that students might not feel entirely confident in their personal ability to innovate or in their knowledge of innovations within their field. Therefore, special “capsule” courses will be created with the aim of teaching principles of innovation and design thinking while simultaneously providing students with specific information about developing innovations in their field of study. Key Tactics: Surveys will be sent out to departments on campus, as well as to students from those departments, asking them questions about their level of knowledge about innovation and design thinking, as well as about the extent to which innovation and its principles are conveyed within the current curriculum. From these surveys, information will be gathered about what specific principles of innovation and design thinking workshop attendees might benefit from most. These “capsule” courses will act as “certifications” that may contribute to a workshop attendee’s resume, and will be taught over the span of a few, hour-long classes. Professors, innovative members of the community, and interested students will help plan the course curricula for each of these “capsule” courses so that all stakeholders feel they have sufficient input in the design and structure of the selected course. To ensure that each department feels they have equal opportunity to see their information represented in one of these “capsule” courses, departments across campus will be linked together to put on these programs so that everyone gets a chance to participate. These departments will spend the duration of the “capsule” course together, understanding how each field contributes to the other’s respective understanding of each other. Fields that are closely-related will be linked together as often as possible so that attendees may understand how their field may interact with members of closely-related sectors. This would spur attendees to be more thoughtful about fostering collaboration between different fields going forward so that they do not become overly siloed. '''2019/20:'''From our Landscape canvas , there are three main problems/issues that we identified as lacking in our campus I&E ecosystem:

#Faculty and I&E:  Some professors employ new creative teaching methods and mechanisms in class whilst others don’t. Some professors cross-collaborate with other departments and schools on campus, whilst others don’t/can’t. Faculty is too ‘busy’ or not all of them incorporate I&E elements/existing I&E resources on campus in their courses.

#Lack of coherence and access: There’s a lot of ground -level I&E going on campus but it’s pretty spread out (different departments have different stuff but with no central coherence and purpose). Likewise, access to many I&E resources on campus is limited.

#The Student Academic Experience & IE: While our Career Services office is one of the top in the country when it comes to job placements and grad schools, there is a skewed data and patterns on which majors most get placed and have better job opportunities. Also, although humanity should be a large part of the school academy, there are few opportunities for students.

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2020 Cohort

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