InnovatingU is a blog about student innovators and incubators of student innovation and was inspired by a conversation with Janny Ke. Janny has been finding creative ways to engage her passion for the arts and sciences through her university student experience, leading a non-profit that uses the art of playwriting to teach the science of sustainability. Janny is leading her own transformation while creating new possibilities for others.
I have been a university Student Recruiter for about 13 years and everything I know about innovation I’ve learned from the stories of students like Janny. The story of a student I met when I recruited for the University of Calgary who is now a professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), taught me that the best way to do “pre-law” may be to start an NGO, and change the world. From other stories I learned how a high school teacher can ignite a process that transforms a student into a scientist and how an idea stimulated in a visual arts class works its way into the imagination of a computer science student. I’ve learned that a single classroom assignment can change a life and that a “spare” may be the most innovative university class of all.
Now I habitually connect students with innovation, which is helping me see that behind many of today’s greatest innovations are students’ stories:
Teach for America – Wendy Koop’s undergraduate thesis launched an organization that is transforming teaching world-wide while proving that a great purpose can attract the best and brightest.
Facebook — Mark Zuckerberg and his friends did what students do best: they found a new way to communicate with each other.
Research in Motion’s founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis proved that you don’t have to graduate from a university to become its most valued alumnus.
Dean Kamen who first made it big by helping solve a problem faced by his brother, a medical student, continues to connect education and invention.
Ashoka – inspired on a summer off from Harvard, Bill Drayton started a student club, Ashoka Table, sowing the seed for the Ashoka Foundation which is now showing the world that if you focus on youth, you can imagine a world where everyone is a Changemaker.
More and more stories are developing every day as people and organizations around the world realize the possibilities of students as agents of Innovation. Companies are re-defining what co-op students can do , foundations are using students to tackle Grand Challenges and professors are nurturing student innovators to help bring their ideas to the world.
This blog will explore stories and invite conversations that reveal the possibilities of Student Innovation. And hopefully we’ll launch some stories as well, maybe by inspiring a high school student in Mumbai to see that her own university experience means new possibilities for her country and the world. So if she ends up at UBC and is transformed by a class designed by a Noble Physicist she’ll be well prepared to connect with a student from Toronto who’ll invite her to spend a summer solving the world’s problems.
Sincerely,
Philip Varghese
