Changes

This strategy is all about is about bringing design thinking into everyday campus life to spark new ideas, startups, and improvements. It’s a way to rethink how things work at Marshall and find creative, student-centered solutions. By encouraging collaboration, empathy, and creativity, we can improve student experiences, rethink campus services, and create new opportunities for engagement. Whether it’s through workshops, class trainings, or partnerships with different departments, design thinking gives students, faculty, and staff the tools to build meaningful change. The iCenter at Marshall University (Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship) plays a huge role in this by making innovation approachable and hands-on, helping everyone feel like they can be part of the solution. Through workshops, design challenges, and cross-campus collaborations, the iCenter empowers students, faculty, and staff to turn ideas into action.

At Marshall University, student retention continues to be a challenge, with many students struggling to find a clear and supportive path towards graduation. To address this issue, we propose using design thinking as a tool to reimagine how the university supports students throughout their academic journey. By conducting workshops, we can better understand the barriers that students face—whether academic, financial, or social—and co-create solutions that address these points. A key focus of this strategy is to make students more knowledgeable about the resources already available to them, since many are underutilized simply because students are unaware they exist or unsure of how to access them. By embedding design thinking into retention strategies and improving awareness of resources, we not only empower students to take ownership of their educational pathways but also create a culture where innovation directly contributes to higher graduation rates and long-term student success.