IGNITE! and HCO3

I am constantly attempting to push the envelope when it comes to creating new and different educational experiences. IGNITE! and HCO3 are both excellent examples of this.

IGNITE!

Read the full proposal.

This $50,000 grant would have supported the pilot and launch of IGNITE, a one-year immersive experience for undergraduate seniors to live and work together in San Francisco with their professors, developing entrepreneurial solutions to pressing social problems leveraging intelligent software, data mining and emergent technologies. Administered by Dr. Radziwill and myself, this course sequence planned to unite students from inherently multidisciplinary areas such as biotechnology, environmental science, and alternative energy. Through IGNITE, E-Teams will serve as the nexus for senior year coursework, an internship, and a senior capstone project, aiming to commercialize developments while embracing social responsibility. With over $13B in annual venture capital activity, San Francisco is an ideal location to leverage established co-working spaces, embed with existing technology startups, and model the attitudes and behaviors needed to launch successful ventures (especially for attracting women into careers in technology). The program’s long-term goals are to:

  1. transition at least one new venture to market each year,
  2. become financially self-sustaining by reinvesting profit from the launched ventures, and
  3. expand to include students, particularly women, from other institutions. IGNITE directly supports JMU President Jonathan Alger’s goal of becoming the “national model for the engaged university” and the JMU mission of “preparing students to be educated and enlightened citizens who lead productive and meaningful lives.”

NOTE: This grant proposal was complete and ready to submit, but was blocked by Dr. Maslen at the last minute (who had originally supported it) because he didn't feel that ISAT could afford to lose two professors for a full year, even though our replacements were budgeted into the grant.

HCO3

Read the full proposal.

Many students at JMU develop entrepreneurial solutions to pressing social and technological problems as part of their required capstone experience. These solutions often leverage sophisticated software, data mining, and emergent technologies. Unfortunately, students are not prepared to turn their ideas into real businesses upon graduation, and miss the chance to create opportunities for both themselves and their local economies.

This proposal seeks to close both of these opportunity gaps. The HCO3 (Hackerspace for COoperative COmmunity COworking) STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) E-Team Experience is a naturally multidisciplinary one-year experiential program for undergraduate seniors working in entrepreneurial teams (E-Teams). It is made possible by the synergy created by:

  1. a place to do work together and share experiences in,
  2. a course sequence to learn about effective business processes and business models (based on existing experimental courses), and
  3. optional travel to San Francisco to spend time with the vibrant creative and entrepreneurial crowd there.

The place is an active "hackerspace"/community co-working and art space in downtown Harrisonburg, Virginia, which will catalyze relationships between students and local professionals. It doesn't exist yet: a student E-Team will help build, develop, and manage it themselves. The course sequence spans the fall and spring semesters of the student's senior year, and provides a way to become professionally certified in quality. It includes material in quality and creativity management, social responsibility, alternative economic models, the arts, data-driven process design and process improvement, value proposition design, business model development, and business model innovation. The travel will bring the students to San Francisco during one week of the senior year, introduce them to hackerspaces, and embed them with other creative young entrepreneurs in residential "innovation hives" to help them connect more powerfully with their own capabilities. This model for HCO3 has drawn from several successful templates, including Freespace (http://freespace.io) and HackCVille (http://hackcville.com/), whose founders have shared their experiences with us.

HCO3 directly supports JMU President Jonathan Alger’s goal of becoming the “national model for the engaged university” and the JMU mission of “preparing students to be educated and enlightened citizens who lead productive and meaningful lives.” Long-term goals will be to:

  1. maintain an active presence as a productive community/university partnership,
  2. bring at least one new venture to market each year,
  3. become financially self-sustaining by reinvesting support from businesses who share the coworking space.

We (myself and Dr. Radziwill) have led entrepreneurial teams in our senior capstone projects for JMU Integrated Science and Technology (ISAT) for several years now, and already teach courses in operations management and venture creation. What's missing is a place where our students can actively engage with the community on a regular basis to form solid relationships, and the resources to make the entrepreneurship process more real for them.

NOTE: This $50,000 proposal was submitted to VentureWell, but unfortunately was not funded. Subsequently, our real-estate partners decided not to participate with us on a re-submission.

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