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Priorities:MTU University Student Priorities

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= Strategies for Expansion of Innovation and Entrepreneurship on Campus =

= Strategy One: Connecting Students through Sustainability = When analyzing the first year experience at Michigan Tech, it became evident that some students felt disconnected from their peers in different majors. For some reason, there was a barrier that was a barrier that was keeping these students from interacting with students that were in other majors. To defeat this barrier, we want to be able to incorporate design thinking into some different areas of our campus to better help our peers be able to work with one another to work on a common goal. One class on the Michigan Tech campus that sees a majority of the student body already tackles large world issues in a lecture type setting: Global Issues. Changing a class can take a lot of steps to implement. During this class changing process, our team wants to get evidence of how students working together to work to a common goal could be a good addition to the class as well as get students more involved on our campus. To do this, our team plans on taking four steps: hosting sustainability workshops in our campus's MakerSpace, deploying a sustainability survey through the first year students to gage their interest on the topic, launch a sustainability initiative on the Michigan Tech campus with the help of different organizations and the student body, and implenting changes to the Global Issues class to incorporate more design thinking and team work. '''Sustainability Workshops: '''Initially we want to start out with some sustainability workshops to see what portion of students are interested in taking a part of a conversation about sustainability. To do this, there will be three different workshops. It will be optional to attend any one of them without attending previous ones to work with the changing schedule of an everyday student. In these workshops, there will be a DIY recyclable project, a sustainability conversation, and a design thinking challenge to get students thinking about their own environmental "pawprint" as a Michgan Tech Husky. '''Campus Survey: '''Next, we plan on taking a poll through the campus, ideally through first-year students to get their perspective on the new campus they've become accustomed to. In this survey, there will be questions about where their interest lies in different sustainability issues whether it be recycling, garbage, renewable energy, and other topics. This will help see what sort of initiatives the student body would be interested in persuing and seeing implemented on their campus. '''Sustainability Initiative: '''With the data found from the campus survey, the team will be able to find what larger interests our new students have with changing their campus. We plan on taking these passions from the student body and creating an initiative that everyone can take a part of changing on their campus. This can be done by reaching out to different areas of the campus and helping with initiatives that are already in place as well as sustaining our own. We want to be able to create a community where people are able to help each other and work together to reach our common goal of sustainability. '''Global Issues Revamp: '''Once we are able to bring different majors together to encourage design thinking to bring solutions to our own campus, we want to bring this data to the faculty that teach the Global Issues class at Michigan Tech. We see great potential in this class to help students gain a larger appreciation for the subject. Incorporating more group work to assign students to different world issues will help students gain an understanding for what is going on in the world outside their bubble on the Michigan Tech campus. == Strategy ~~One~~Two: Innovation Learning Community ==

With the formation of the new Pavlis Honors College on Michigan Tech's campus, the are plenty of new opportunities available to introduce innovation and creative thinking early in the student experience. One of the best ways to inspire a shared vision within students is provide them with the opportunity to spend time with other students who are interested in similar ideas. By creating an environment where students are constantly challenged to think differently in their everyday experiences, they will develop a more diverse set of problem solving skills to implement in their daily lives.

Next year the Pavlis Honors College will have a learning community for first year students in the College. This will be a great opportunity to test out some creative ways to incorporate creative thinking into residence hall life. Resident Assistants are currently required to create programs for their students to participate in and this would be an exceptional opportunity to test out some new ideas. Some of these programs that they do with their students make include some of the events such as the Make-a-thon or the 10X Thinking Workshop.

== Strategy ~~Two~~Three: Innovation and Brainstorming Course ==

Currently, first year engineering students can be found using their brainstorming and innovation skills in class. These skills are typically not used again until the student reaches their fourth or fifth year and are taking Senior Design or join an Enterprise Team. There are many instances where students have a hard time trying to think of ideas for projects because they are trying to focus on what they have learned from the books, but when they get out into the real world, the answer will not be in the back of the book.

This class will help students to continue to use their brainstorming and innovation tools that they have learned so that they can use these tools in the future. This course will also help guide students to think outside the box so that it is easier to tackle problems in future courses and in the real world. This could possibly be a program of classes that will take place during both the student's second and third year in order to make sure that the student is ready to tackle the final projects before graduating and heading out into the work force.

== Strategy ~~Three~~Four: Innovation Retreat ==

Currently, Michigan Tech has a focus on retreats for Leadership and similar skills, but no such thing for Innovation. There is plenty of time within the curriculum schedules of students who are interested to attend a weekend retreat to the surrounding wilderness of Michigan Tech, and focus solely on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, to help cultivate an Innovative Mindset.

This retreat would help students cultivate Innovation Mindsets by presenting them with real world challenges, and giving them time to work on finding solutions for these challenges, followed by creating prototypes of their solutions by using whatever resources they find in the surrounding area. On the final day, the students will discuss challenges in the local community of Michigan Tech and how they might go about solving those challenges, as well as other strategies for staying involved in an innovation mindset after they leave the retreat.

== Strategy ~~Four~~Five: I&E Event Series ==

After creating an amazing collaborative space on campus, there will be plenty of opportunities to host events focused on innovation and entrepreneurship. These events will focus on creating excitement about the new initiatives on campus and recruit motivated students for the new I&E section of the Pavlis Honors College. The Pathways team has been working on bringing in a few speakers, and the student programming board is already planning an event to be held in the space.

'''10X Thinking Workshop''' - An opportunity for students to understand the steps to brainstorming and prototyping an idea. One of these already happened on campus in a small scale, but the hope is to have more in order to reach more students.

== Strategy ~~Five~~Six: StartupTech ==

StartupTech is an Enterprise team that connects top student talent to student led startups. It utilizes the existing enterprise infrastructure to ensure student involvement by allowing students to work on a startup team as part of their required credits for graduation. Connecting engineering teams to students motivated by turning an idea into a business will help promote business development far more than it currently is at Michigan Tech.

A Board of Directors for the program would consist of faculty involved in I&E on campus, a representative from the Houghton SmartZone and a student with startup and leadership experience. The board will be responsible for selecting the ventures to include in the program as well as monitoring the students participating in the program.

== Strategy ~~Six~~Seven: Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship ==

=== Command the Dialogue ===

Chardin

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