Students as Change Agents: Leveraging Students to Infuse Innovation & Entrepreneurship into the Campus Ecosystem

Engineering students have many opportunities to engage in existing co-curricular activities such as robotics clubs and Engineers Without Borders but have fewer chances to create participate and entrepreneurship (I&E) activities. Changing the culture and structures of a campus to provide curricular, co-curricular, and informal opportunities to engage in I&E requires a systemic approach. Engineering students are often an untapped resource for making such a campus-based change. Epicenter, an NSF Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program (STEP) center, operates with the mission of empowering US undergraduate engineering students to bring their ideas to life for the benefit of our economy and society. Epicenter conducts research, works with faculty, and through the University Innovation Fellows (UIF) program, has generated a student-led grassroots method for infusing I&E into the university ecosystem. As of February 2016, over 600 undergraduates from 143 institutions have gone through the UIF training. These student participants, known as “Fellows,” acquire knowledge of tools, frameworks, program models, and leadership skills to help them develop an entrepreneurial mindset and creative confidence. These skills are systematically applied as they work with students, faculty, and other stakeholders to expand the campus ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship. Fellows organize events, develop and secure physical space, contribute to course development, and engage administrators. Many of the Fellows go on to influence the national conversation on I&E by organizing regional events and participating in forums that present at national conferences, such as ASEE, and White House STEM initiatives. The purpose of this study is to explore how to evaluate a student change program in which both students and an institution are effected. Annual surveys suggest both Fellows and their Faculty Sponsors find students to be an effective resource for making campus-based change. Questions this paper will explore include: How can a student training program define success at the individual and institutional level? o What personal, programmatic, and contextual factors correlate with success? What is the value to faculty of students as change agents for expanding the I&E ecosystem on a campus? Introduction Innovation and change in technology has been advancing at a historically unprecedented pace. Yet universities struggle to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and mindsets that will help them succeed as part of the workforce and tackle the world’s big challenges. Students have great potential for influencing and accelerating change in higher education through peer outreach, institutional advocacy, and the creation of new learning opportunities designed in parallel and in concert faculty and administrators. Yet they remain a largely untapped resource. The UIF Program Since 2013, the University Innovation Fellows (UIF) program has been activating students as change agents in the United States. Cultivated as an initiative of the NSF-funded National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter), which is managed by Stanford University and the VentureWell, the program has developed an immersive training and a multi-campus community of practice that equips students with the knowledge, skills, and mindsets to act as strategic thinkers and change agents. The UIF program trains students to become as conversant about the campus innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem as their faculty and administrative counterparts. Leveraging a custom hybrid model that combines experiential online training with in-person events, the program exposes students to design thinking and lean startup techniques, as well as a campus asset mapping tool called the “landscape canvas” and knowledge of program models and assets that support innovation in academia. The UIF program taps students’ intrinsic motivation to learn, draws on their unique interests/ passions, and exposes them to a broad set of global resources, as well as skillsets and mindsets. In doing so, the UIF program has systematically empowered teams of students to create new learning opportunities that expose hundreds and thousands of their peers to creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. What began in Engineering (because of the focus of Epicenter) spread to Computer Science (CS) and many other disciplines and majors. The program has appealed to a diverse set of schools and regions across the US, and as a result, Fellows have reached an equally diverse population of peers to equip them with the skills and mindsets needed to enter the workforce of the 21st century. Students apply to become University Innovation Fellows either individually or in teams of up to 5 members (called “Leadership Circles”). They must have a faculty sponsor and their institution pays a fee towards the 6-weeks online training and participation in the Silicon Valley in-person training. Leadership Circles additionally require a letter of support from the institution’s president or provost. Two cohorts of candidates (Fall and Spring) go through the online training each year, and upon completion of the training deliverables, they are launched as Fellows and come together for a 3-day Meetup in Silicon Valley, which includes a full day of activities at Google and 2 days at Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka d.school). To date there have been over 600 Fellows trained in 9 cohorts. Evaluation Questions The purpose of this study is to explore how to evaluate a student change program in which both students and an institution are effected. Annual and alumni surveys suggest both Fellows and their Faculty Sponsors find students to be an effective resource for making campus based change. This paper will explore the following evaluation questions: EQ1: How can a student training program define success at the individual and institutional level? ▪ What personal, programmatic and contextual factors correlate with success? EQ2: What is the value to faculty of students as change agents for expanding the I&E ecosystem on a campus? Methods and Data Sources The following section describes the data sources that were used and how each contributed to the analysis. Data sources Fellow Survey In May 2015, an annual on-line survey was administered to the sixth and seventh cohorts (C6 & C7) of the University Innovation Fellows program. This survey was designed to capture Fellow activity, perceived preparedness, value of the training, and program satisfaction. C6 was approximately 7 months out of training and C7 was 2.5 months out of training. There were closed and open-end questions included in the survey. All 176 Fellows were invited to respond to the survey which asked for demographic background, experience in the training, their perceived success as Fellows, and their achievements to date. Names were asked for tracking purposes and students received individual reminders to complete the survey. A total of 133 Fellows responded to the survey, yielding a response rate of 76%. There were 64 unique institutions represented in the student respondent population. Faculty sponsor survey During the same May 2015 timeframe, Faculty Sponsors supporting C6 or C7 Fellows were sent an annual survey in which they were asked about their background characteristics, experience in the program, the success of their Fellows, and the impact of the Fellows on the institution. There were closed and open-end questions included in the survey. There were 66 respondents representing 50 institutions. For situations in which there was more than one Sponsor per Fellow, application records were consulted and only the “Primary Sponsor” was included in the analysis. Sponsors were not asked about any specific Fellow; all Sponsors had at least one Fellow in C6 or C7, and many had multiple Fellows and/or Fellows from cohorts one through five. Institutional data For each participating institution, a unique set of Institutional-level variables was created through Fellow and Sponsor survey data. Variables were created from the student data by averaging the Fellows’ responses, accepting any “yes” response to establishing space, infrastructure or resource and influence, and including all open-end comments. Institutional characteristics such as size, selectivity, and degrees offered were also drawn from the IPEDS database managed through the National Center for Education Statistics, UIF, and Epicenter program records.