Walking to work past the old Radio Shack building at the corner of Comm. Ave and St. Mary’s St. over the past few months, I have been observing the construction of something new in that corner storefront space. I have eagerly anticipated its conversion into the BUild Lab – the IDG Capital Student Innovation Center at Boston University, and home of Innovate@BU. This past week, the brown paper came off the windows and the name was painted on the glass in symbolic rainbowish colors—highlighting that this place is meant for all BU students who want to make a difference in the world. This new University entity promises to transform and engage our community and support our vision for experiential learning.
Innovate@BU (Innovate, for short) is a donor-funded initiative, envisioned by President Brown and designed by a faculty network to support students who want to bring their ideas for transforming lives and society into tangible reality. The BUild Lab will house staff and provide spaces for individuals and teams of students to brainstorm, elaborate, and pitch ideas; learn and implement innovation strategies; and create implementation, campaign, and business plans. The mission and vision are succinctly stated on the Innovate website: “Our world needs more artists, more entrepreneurs, more creative solutions to societal problems. We need more innovators. Innovate@BU is where students can find the resources to turn ideas into actions that make an impact.”
This is a big promise. But with a newly hired and talented staff, with guidance from stakeholders throughout the campus, and with participation by students from all of BU’s schools, I believe we will make good on it. Executive Director Gerry Fine has already proven his ability to create opportunity and excitement around innovation as director of EPIC, the largest engineering student makerspace of its kind, and the team he has assembled brings excellent experience in social and business innovation. BU’s deans will be involved in encouraging students, faculty, and staff from their schools and colleges to participate; I am excited to be the chair of the dean’s advisory council, which will set the direction for this important initiative.
The success of other important centers of student innovation on campus gives me confidence that we are ready for a pan-University innovation center. The Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC), BU Spark!, the BU Arts Initiative, and the Activist Lab in the School of Public Health each serves a particular population of students on campus. In contrast, Innovate is a hub for all of those spokes to feed into and from which to gain support. Students can find inspiration at any one of those centers that speaks to their interest and need, or they can go straight to Innovate to get involved in innovation at any stage of the process, from idea through planning and implementation and even securing external funding to take a product to market.
To see what this can mean for students, we can look to the example of BU Spark!, which serves the needs of students interested in digital technology innovations, and is housed in the Hariri Institute for Computation and Computer Engineering. BU Spark!, funded by Trustee Alicia Mullen, began only a year ago when the director, Ziba Cranmer, joined BU with deep experience in innovation with companies such as Nike and a nonprofit group working to combat sex trafficking with technology. Ziba has been working with students and faculty from the computer science department and the colleges of communication and engineering. She has been supporting courses and creating independent study projects by asking industry and nonprofit partners for real-world problems and datasets that students can use to catalyze innovation. Spark! has also been supporting student clubs as they host workshops and hackathons. In December, students in the Spark! venture class presented poster sessions on a range of innovation projects pursued by the 17 enrolled students.
For CAS students beyond computer science, Innovate will provide opportunities to learn about leadership and teamwork, and to put their skills into practice on projects that the students design. Today’s BU students, like Clarinda Blais, who started the Free Philosophy Project at homeless shelters, are driven to solve problems. Our students in CAS see global and local problems and want to make the world a better place through their education and effort.
Innovate will be an important addition to our experiential learning opportunities, which are especially critical for students in the arts and sciences to embrace. These opportunities help them answer the inevitable “what are you going to do with that?” question, and move confidently into their futures. CAS students will add a special sauce to the student teams that are attracted to Innovate. Our students will bring their broad liberal educations—their education in diverse fields of literature, ethics, and politics, in astronomy, biology, and women’s and gender studies—to collaborate with students with a narrower practical focus in the professional schools and colleges. It promises to be a potent mix for all concerned, from which the world will be sure to profit in multiple ways.
The ribbon cutting for the BUild Lab is on February 1. There will be Friday office hours every week, and Innovation Week is scheduled for April 17-20, culminating in a conference that weekend. Exciting times!