Two OHIO students named University Innovation Fellows
November 15, 2018
Two Ohio University Honors Tutorial College students have been named 2018 University Innovation Fellows — a program that empowers students to become agents of change at their schools. This is the third year in a row that OHIO has had two students selected for the program.
HTC business major Audrey Bull and HTC environmental studies major Ed Drabold are two of 358 students from 96 higher education institutions and 16 countries who were named fellows this year.
UIF is run by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), and has trained 1,800 students across the globe since its creation. The fellows have developed student innovation spaces like OHIO’s new CoLab, which was created by former fellows; founded entrepreneurship organizations, hosted experiential events and worked with faculty and administrators to develop courses.
Fellows are sponsored by faculty and administrators as individuals or teams of students and selected through an application process. Following acceptance into the program, schools fund the students through six weeks of online training and travel to one of two in-person meetups to continue their projects and skill building.
Bull and Drabold were sponsored by the Center for Entrepreneurship. The center’s director, Paul Mass, and associate director, Paul Benedict, are their faculty champions. The directors meet with the students each week to see what they’ve accomplished and acts as mentors.
Both Bull and Drabold have had incredibly experiential learning experiences in their time at OHIO that led them to the fellowship.
Bull was instrumental in the opening of the CoLab, as she worked with faculty in the Center for Entrepreneurship to bring it to life. Drabold has conducted original lab research, working on carbon capture from algae. He deployed some of their proprietary techniques this summer at an internship with Honda’s R&D team.
As a part of the UIF program, Bull and Drabold hope to bring “First University Class” to OHIO.
Ideally, the class, with the backbone of civility, diversity and history, would show tangible success stories of OHIO alumni. It would be an introduction to Appalachia, the region and how Ohio University contributes to it. And, it would push students to find their passion and purpose.
“We would like them to develop a passion,” Drabold noted. “These people, the alumni who have gone on to achieve great success, developed a passion and then they followed through with it. Students would not have to have a passion coming out of the class but would need to show that they’ve worked towards it.”