Changes

After interviewing many faculty and deans around campus, it was clear the awareness of campus resources across different disciplines was severely lacking. Even within each school (engineering, business, etc.) knowledge of prototyping resources such as 3D printers, modeling software, and machine work shops was inconsistent across many students and faculty. To solve this problem, we are envisioning a web portal documenting campus resource resources such as 3D printers, milling machines, biosafety hoods, etc. For example, a student could query for 3D printers and get several hits in the schools of engineering and art. Each resource will have the contact name of the person managing that resource for student entrepreneurs.  This will also help to encourage collaboration across schools. Currently, students in the business school have trouble accessing many of the engineering resources such as the machine shop. Having this portal will document how they should go about getting access, the best times to go and who to contact. With such a compact collection of the resources, the university will also be better able to allocate its resources since it will be clear on what already exists and what is lacking. Lastly, we could also have a wishlist section on the page of new equipment desired or equipment that needs to be repaired or replaced. Alumni and other sponsors of the university will have access to this page and can choose to fund something specific instead of the unviersity as a whole.