Entrepreneurship is a contact sport—if institutions are to scale their efforts in entrepreneurship they must find innovative ways to change their ecosystems outside of the traditional classroom model. The panel presents two key examples. First, University of Michigan students have created competition called 1000 Pitches, the largest student-run pitch competition in the U.S. Last year, they collected over 4,000 pitches ranging from economic development needs to medical devices to clean energy and are sharing the model with Pennsylvania State University. Second, The Epicenter Student Engagement Strategy, an NSF-funded STEP Center, supports student changemakers to enhance engineering education on their campuses, encouraging entrepreneurially inclined engineering students to address the gaps crucial to their experience. Examples of student-led impact will be described where University Innovation Fellows address gaps in their innovation ecosystems. The University Innovation Fellows will each describe how they addressed a missing link in their innovation ecosystems.

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Last year the President outlined an ambitious plan to make a college education accessible for everyone. Part of the plan promotes innovation in providing information, tools and resources that help students make the most of their educational experience. At Epicenter, we believe the entrepreneurial mindset is a fundamentally important skill that must be a part of every student’s college experience. That’s why the University Innovation Fellows, students hand-picked by their institutions and trained to enhance the Innovation & Entrepreneurship ecosystem, rose to the call. Students created a wiki (universityinnovation.org) that ‘open sources’ a rich trove of information about courses, programs, tools and resources on their own campuses. This allows peers access to information about curricular and extracurricular opportunities that cut across a university’s schools, departments and centers. Students are able to navigate all available resources to cultivate their creative potential, nurture their innovative abilities and adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. In addition, Fellows and Faculty identify student-perceived gaps that can be bridged using new and creative methods. Panelists will describe strategies campuses can use to gather landscape information, ways to share the information and opportunities to engage students as part of the solution. Interactive discussion follows brief panel remarks allowing participants at campuses of different size and ecosystem maturity to discuss student engagement on their own campus.

All too often in higher education the idea of Makers & Hackers has a negative connotation. This couldn’t be further from the truth. We are all makers, and many of us are hackers. The Maker movement grew out of the DIY culture, specifically from the halls of MAKE magazine and other thriving communities. Innovation is happening in Maker & Hacker spaces across America. The business model is based on open-source hardware and software. It’s not a typical plan to say the least, but that’s exactly why it works. We are redefining the financing and banking industry by crowdfunding our projects on Kickstarter. We are creating the third industrial revolution, and it’s not always happening at corporate headquarters–it’s happening in your neighbor’s garage.

Join an informal conversation with the NCIIA Alumni who presented on their ventures at lunch. This continuation of the Alumni Panel is an opportunity to get a deeper level of understanding of how these founders developed their innovations and launched their companies. The entire session will engage participants in Q&A with the panelists; expect to learn more about their mistakes and successes as well as how their educational experiences prepared them to be entrepreneurs.