Department/Program:

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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Majors, Minors & Degrees:

Majors

This degree attracts disrupters and self-starters who seek to identify, research, and solve problems with skills rooted in technology, business, arts, social sciences, and humanities. Students are encouraged to develop expertise beyond the major in the academic discipline of their choice. The best innovators are those who pair expertise with an entrepreneurial mindset.

Program Learning Outcomes:

Students will combine liberal arts learning with the ability to identify opportunities, overcome obstacles, and learn from setbacks.
Students will develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
Students will learn to create, test and revise their ideas.
Students will engage in problem-solving through project-based learning by collaborating and working in terms.
Students will engage in real words settings through internships, projects, and partnerships with local founders.

Courses

INNOV 1000 Ideas To Innovation

3 hours

This foundational course introduces creative ideas, an entrepreneurial mindset, and a team approach to problem-solving. Throughout the semester, students will learn the technical, business, artistic, writing and speaking skills necessary to promote innovation. Students will apply models of innovation to develop and pitch their own original ideas and solutions to existing businesses in our community

INNOV 2000 Problem Solving

3 hours

This course offers an immersive experience in Design Thinking as a tool for innovative ideas and strategy development. Design Thinking draws on methods from engineering and design, and combines them with ideas from the arts, tools from the social sciences, and insights from the business world. Students will complete readings and independent activities that support collaborative group work. Student teams start in the field, where they discover the needs of the target audience with a real world problem. Then then iterate ideas to develop a range of promising possible solutions (product or service or system), create rough prototypes to take back out into the field, and test with real people in the target audience. The course culminates with a public pitch contest. Typically taken in the sophomore year. Normally offered in the fall and spring.

INNOV 4970 Internship

1-8 hours

First-hand experience working in startups, businesses or nonprofits alongside innovators, entrepreneurs and intrpreneurs. The students will work with the director of the program to arrange the internship. Typically completed in the junior year. No Pass/Fail. Prerequisite: INNOV-2000 and junior standing or permission of the program chair.

INNOV 4980 Final Project

3 hours

Students will develop a project that corresponds with their career goals. Examples could include innovating new processes and policies, reimagining existing structures and paradigms, and developing new businesses and startups. The course culminates with a public pitch or presentation. Students will process and refect upon this experience with other students in the corequisite INNOV-4990 Capstone. Typically completed in the senior year. No Pass/Fail. Prerequisite: Senior standing and permission of the program chair. Corequisite: INNOV-4990

INNOV 4990 Capstone

1 hours

This is a course taken as part of the signature work (INNOV-4980:Final Project) done by students at the end of their degree program. Students will acquire fundamental knowledge and skills to establish a business, create a prototype, and/or disrupt an industry. This knowledge will include both industry specific knowledge as well as hot to identify necessary financial, legal, and human resources to get their idea off the ground. Throughout this semester-long process, students will be paired with a hand selected group of experts, specific to the industry selected by the student, to mentor and guide them through their endeavor. Students will connect their previous learning in the Archway Curriculum, both in their liberal arts and Innovation and Entrepreneurship major, with the Final Project. They will engage in discourse with other students about their work and prepare for the next stage of their career. No Pass/Fail. Prerequisite: Senior standing and permission of the program chair. Corequisite: INNOV-4980.