My Year as a University Innovation Fellow By Jessica Carlson, Class of 2019

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1 My Year as a University Innovation Fellow By Jessica Carlson, Class of 2019 The University Innovation Fellows (UIF), a program of Stanford University s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), was established by the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation with funding from the National Science Foundation. UIF challenges students to become change agents within their college or university through a variety of skills and technologies taught throughout an intensive, six-week online training course in addition to hands-on projects and an in-person Meetup. In late October of 2016, I was nominated to the first UIF Leadership Circle at Menlo College with three other students: Yasmin Gomez, Maxwell Barnes and Russell Perkins. From interviews to our acceptance to the start of a rigorous training process, I had no idea what journey would lie ahead of me. My team and I were so excited for an opportunity to impact Menlo College. After completing a detailed application, which included written and video responses, we were accepted into the program as UIF candidates and began our six-week online training course the last week of winter break. We had to be on top of our team assignments, which were due every Thursday night. Throughout the six weeks of training, I got to know my cohort as if they were friends I had known my entire life. We were thrown into this program with no previous leaders to help us and a major learning curve in understanding the program; ultimately, all we had were each other. Working on a team can be difficult. We each had different class schedules on top of our own personal responsibilities, which made finding time every week to complete our assignments difficult. We utilized evenings when we had the chance, and my phone was constantly blowing up from our group chat. UIF s online conferencing tool, BlueJeans, helped when all four of us couldn t be in the same place at once. One project we had to complete was taking an inventory of entrepreneurship on our campus utilizing a worksheet known as the Change Model Canvas. As a team, we came up with a list of stakeholders at Menlo College who we thought would be most knowledgeable on the topic of entrepreneurship at our school and developed how might we statements, to think creatively about opportunities. After completing our interviews, we realized as a team that we barely had any information collected on our canvas because Menlo College s current focus on entrepreneurship was limited. These

2 findings encouraged my group and me to strive for change on our campus because we knew we were the ones who could expand entrepreneurship at our school; and being recognized as Fellows added extra motivation to see our change through. This program acted as another class, and at an accelerated rate, made our weekly assignments crucial to complete. Time management played a huge role in our experience because if we missed an assignment, we would have fallen behind very fast. The UIF educators kept an Excel spreadsheet on what assignments each school had completed--it was nerve wracking to see many names highlighted in red, meaning they were so far behind, they were no longer in the program. We motivated each other to stay on top of our work and finish our training strong. Our ambition and optimism throughout the UIF training led us to being launched on February 20, 2017 as official University Innovation Fellows. We were so happy to have completed most of the hard work in being launched, but the real work had not even begun yet to change the entrepreneurship and innovative ecosystem on Menlo College s campus. However, our plans as change agents had to wait because we got to celebrate our accomplishments at the UIF Silicon Valley Meetup. We spent a day at Google, a day and half at Stanford University s d.school as well as a morning at Microsoft--needless to say, it was a three-day whirlwind of everything design thinking and innovation! I have never experienced anything quite like the UIF meetup. In a little over 72 hours, I met people from around the world, made best friends for life and was utterly inspired by each ignite presentation. Ignite presentations were given by the Meetup leaders who were previous fellows called the FABs (for being Fabulous Fellows). In addition to sharing their own creative experiences, we got to hear from special speakers, like Daniel Seddiqui, who is a Bay Area native, known for completing 50 jobs in 50 states. We also heard first-hand from executives at both Google and Microsoft.

3 The day we spent at Google HQs was filled with Googley activities and speaker presentations. We got to hear from C-suite level employees on the specifics of working at Google and ask them questions. One of my favorite activities of the day was a rock, paper, scissors competition. Now, this was not an ordinary rock, paper, scissors game. This competition started with every fellow in the room turning to someone next to them, shaking their hand, then playing. Whoever lost the rock, paper, scissors instantly became the winner s biggest fan. Each time someone won, you would continue to follow the winner until there were only two players left, who got on top of the tables in the conference room we were in and played a final rock, paper, scissors game. The point of this activity was to support other people because outcomes will be more creative if we collaborate and support each other. During our lunch break, we were given the opportunity to explore the Google Garage. Upon entering the garage, you are automatically overcome with creative energy being surrounded by everything and anything you would want in an innovation center. From watching an employee code on a 3-D printer to playing with their rolling white boards and foam cubes to walking into a hidden sewing room, it is no wonder Google Glass was invented in this space! We played countless design thinking activities with our Meetup groups. The Menlo College cohort was in one of the best groups, The Power Rangers! Each group was made up of UIF fellows from all over the world; whether it was Oregon, Pennsylvania, Australia, India, or Uruguay, I got to meet so many different people and hear about what they were doing on their campuses. For example, for the activities, I broke away from my cohort to make new connections. I will never forget the connection I made with the Australian Leadership Circle, representing University of Technology Sydney. I got to work with the Australian cohort on various occasions and enjoyed an almost instantaneous friendship with them. Since the SVMU, I have stayed in touch with my new Australian friends and I currently have a trip planned to visit them! This is just one example of how amazing the community bond is with UIF. In addition to adding new friends I made on social media, I am constantly in communication with the UIF community through a closed Facebook group made just for Fellows. On this Facebook group, I receive updates on changes happening at other UIF colleges and universities, read shared articles as well as additional UIF events or meet-ups happening near me. My favorite part of this forum is

4 how open and supportive every fellow is; for example, you can post about your accomplishments or your hardships and seek advice from the directors and other fellows who may have gone through a similar situation and know how to help. It has been one of my favorite resources since launching because I get to not only brag about our amazing accomplishments as change makers at Menlo College, I get daily wisdom from members of the group that make me so excited to keep pursuing change. As a culmination of all our hard work, we were finally recognized as Fellows at our school through a special pinning ceremony in March, post-meetup. The Menlo College president, chair of the Board of Trustees, faculty sponsors and our families were all present to witness our special ceremony that officially inducted us as University Innovation Fellows for Menlo College. Our faculty sponsor gave us special gifts from the UIF program and pinned us, and each of my team members talked about our experience and our plans for changing on our campus. One of the biggest takeaways from the Meetup was a phrase that we were continuously reminded of, do epic shit, get epic shit done. Through UIF, I was immersed in a world of creative thinking that has changed my thought process. I see myself as an entrepreneur and innovator. As our UIF training ends, we look forward to taking the next steps to change the ecosystem at Menlo College. There has been a dichotomy between us being the first UIF Leadership Circle at our school because we get to pursue initial change, but have no advice or guidance from experienced Fellows before us. I am looking forward to helping the next cohort of Fellows, since my team and I will have ideas about how to advise them given the learning curve we experienced. In addition, I have been able to take what I have learned and implement design thinking in other organizations I am involved in, too! My team and I have several plans in the works for Menlo College; but our most important one is creating an innovation space on campus. The Innovation Center is the first project we have started as Fellows and we have taken major strides to achieve this goal; I am extremely excited to say our small idea has turned into a reality as we are currently seeing our plans through for the first ever innovative space at Menlo College!

5 On August 18, we organized our first work day, to help build out the Innovation Center. With the help of excited students, we set up our furniture, put together z-rack white boards as well as other fun items to have in our space like moveable carts which will be supplied with endless sharpies, Post-It notes, Expo markers and more materials to prototype with! We look forward to opening this space to Menlo College students, faculty, staff, and alumni. For now, we will continue to think big and think bigger as University Innovation Fellows.