UCS grad among select college students honored for innovation

A 2014 Utica Community Schools graduate is among a select number of college students named University Innovation Fellows by the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter).

Sarah Mauser, a Utica High School graduate who also attended the Utica Center for Science and Industry, is among 155 national college students who will advocate for innovation, entrepreneurship, design thinking and creativity at their schools.

“I’m very excited to be a part of this,” Mauser said. “It is an honor to be a Fellow and for me to be an agent of change at University of Detroit Mercy.”

The University Innovation Fellows program allows students to help their peers gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to compete in the economy of the future and make a positive impact on the world.

Fellows design innovation spaces, start entrepreneurship organizations, host experiential learning events and work with faculty to develop new courses.

As a UCS student, was activeon UCSI's Innovative Vehicle Design team. She was also the recipient of the Davinci Award, an annual award which honors a senior who excels in all areas of UCSI including having the ability to cross the curricular "boundaries" between multimedia and engineering.

As part of her application to the University Innovation Fellows, Mauser created four YouTube videos on the topics:آ Need to know, Passionate Problem, Redesigning Education and Opposing Forces.

The University Innovation Fellows program is run by Epicenter, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and directed by Stanford University and VentureWell.

With the addition of the new Fellows, the program has trained 607 students at 143 institutions since the beginning of the Epicenter grant.

“We believe that students can be so much more than just the customers of higher education,” said Humera Fasihuddin, co-leader of the University Innovation Fellows program. “Fellows are acting as co-designers of the higher education experience, and they are actively collaborating with faculty and administrators to make lasting changes at their schools. They utilize their resourcefulness, creativity and national network to make measurable gains, both in the number of resources and the students served by the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.”

Following acceptance into the program, students will go through six weeks of online training and travel to the University Innovation Fellows Annual Meetup in Silicon Valley.

Throughout the year, they take part in events and conferences across the country and have opportunities to learn from one another, Epicenter mentors, and leaders in academia and industry.

In late March, students will have the opportunity to participate in the Silicon Valley Meetup, which brings together all Fellows trained in Fall 2015 and Spring 2016.

During this meeting, March 17-22, Fellows will take part in immersive experiences at Google and Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). They will participate in experiential workshops and exercises focused on topics including movement building, student innovation spaces, design of learning experiences, and new models of change in higher education.