Changes

<span style="font-size: small;">With the addition of the iCube and iMakerspace to Tennessee Technological University's campus, a key resource for innovation and entrepreneurship is available for all students to utilize. The iCube hosts a virtual reality lab, brainstorming area and classroom, and an iMakerspace loaded with machines like 3-D printers and lab space.&nbsp;Currently, the space is primarily used by engineering students, as well as a small proportion of business students. To introduce students of all majors to entrepreneurship and innovation both on campus and within this new resource, specialized pop-ups should be held which represent the interests of various underrepresented majors in the iCube. For example, a pop-up class which showed wildlife and fisheries students how to 3-D print fish hooks would bring students of other majors into the space and increase exposure to interdisciplinary work with engineering students. Specialized pop-up classes will be open to all students, increasing the likelihood of involving more majors in the iCube and iMakerspace.&nbsp;</span>

#<span style="font-size: small;">'''Spark interest early''': Targeting students during freshman year is a tactic universities deploy across the country to increase student discovery of I&E and promote its continued pursuit. If we can teach students to look for the I&E opportunities around them in their UNIV 1010 Freshman Connections course (see Strategic Priority #3) the proposed program will provide a guided opportunity to pursue these ideas long-term.</span>

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

Tennessee Tech has the potential to become a top school for innovation. Its campus is filled with students who care about and want to solve real problems. It's also filled with a faculty that is doing a variety of research, some faculty members are even taking their research to market. Below are some goals that should be implemented in order to take Tennessee Tech to the next level in regard to innovation and entrepreneurship. It is split up into three main tasks that are then subdivided. The previous tasks of TTU's Spring of 2014 Fellow have been successful but are still being completed. Enis was able to start an entrepreneurship society on campus that has gained members and recognition across all disciplines and colleges on campus. The Maker Space that was supposed to be completed by Fall of 2014 is still under construction but will hopefully be completed by the end of the Spring of 2015 semester.

Description: This would allow students to focus on the fourteen grand global challenges presented by the NAE and develop their own solutions to these challenges as they are receiving their education from the university. Now that the student body is being educated about innovation and entrepreneurship, it is time to focus on the freshman students as well as the incoming freshman of classes to come. I feel this can be achieved by starting a chapter of the NAE: Grand Challenge Scholars Program.

The second task is to create an interdisciplinary student think tank. The purpose of this group would be to capitalize on the members’ combined expertise, consistent with the design-thinking model, and to utilize their knowledge in innovation and entrepreneurship through consulting, ideating, and analyzing in various projects for Tennessee Technological University and local businesses in the upper Cumberland region.

Tactics