Changes

Through our investigation of the I&E ecosystem on our campus, a dichotomy began to emerge where in which I saw a divergence between those who viewed the design thinking process as valuable in itself and those who viewed it as a means to developing technology. Tennessee Tech has done an admirable job  building out the infrastructure that which could support creating technology or a company, but has room to grow in terms of developing an I&E culture.

Design thinking as a methodology has value when applied to a person’s life, college experience, or career. I&E can provide value to every Tech student regardless of what they do after graduation. My goal is to blend I&E into the freshman curriculum through the University Connections class. I want every freshmen freshman to begin their his/her time at Tech with an I&E boot camp.

I will run a pilot “Design Thinking College” course. The class will meet in the maker space and feature key I&E faculty and leadership as guest speakers and guest lecturers. The class will involve a hands on I&E project from day one and will conclude with an idea pitch competition. The goal of this This class is aims to introduce students to the I&E framework so early in their college careers it becomes their defaults default, and they can engage in the community and culture we are trying to build at Tennessee Tech.