The Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship (HESE) program at Penn State is a collaborative program geared towards creating a freer, fairer, friendlier, and more sustainable world. The program focuses on real-world contexts in indigenous communities around the world.

This grant helps to fill a critical gap in the HESE program by developing a course dedicated to business planning for social ventures in the US and abroad. The course covers the fundamental concepts of social entrepreneurship and employs diverse case studies and experiential learning activities to help students develop a deeper understanding of social problems and devise innovative enterprise solutions to address them.

While HESE currently exists as a certificate program, Penn State is exploring the opportunity to expand it into a minor.

Over the last several years, NYU-POLY has been immersed in an initiative known as I2E: a transformation to integrate innovation, invention, and entrepreneurship into its core focus. Part of I2E was a $2 million grant recently awarded from New York State for construction of the Center for Innovation in Technology and Entertainment, a space focusing on the development new technologies and ventures centered around digital media.

Given the steps achieved thus far in the I2E initiative, NYU-POLY is making further curriculum changes in its Computer Science department. First, changes will be made to its Senior Design project course, a capstone project course, which will include categorizing material into three areas: (a) creativity exercises, (b) problem identification and needs analysis, and (c) talks from invited inventors and entrepreneurs. These changes will be in parallel with the piloting of “Inventor’s Studio,” a new interdisciplinary project experience where students can further develop their ideas in digital media.

Faculty from the GlobalResolve program at ASU is developing a capstone courses and a certificate for Global Innovation for Village Entrepreneurship (GIVE) with the express purpose of creating solutions to village problems in developing countries and then building businesses around the solutions. The capstone courses are:

1) Global Impact Entrepreneurship: Introduction to global poverty, entrepreneurship and village appraisal;

2) Village Immersion: Travel to and assessment of needs of a developing village using GlobalResolve partners to identify the village and arrange for local help. The goal is to talk to the villagers and experience what poverty looks like, feels like and the specific needs of the villagers and to mentor the village in venture startup.

3) Solution Development: Creating a sustainable technological business solution for a village. This course will bring together the theory from course 1 and the experience from the field trips in course 2 into a set of products developed for a village in order to create village-based sustainable business ventures.

The capstone is also participating in the Acara Institute’s Challenge program, with multiple partners for global impact.

Globalization has increased the need for a socially aware, interdisciplinary workforce with intercultural competence. In order to satisfy both the needs of current employers and socially inclined undergraduate students, this grant is supporting the implementation a Specialization in Sustainable Global Health Design (GDH). Building on the new minor in multidisciplinary design infrastructure within the University of Michigan College of Engineering, the GDH Specialization will provide interdisciplinary undergraduate engineering students with an intense two-semester design course featuring project scoping, co-creation with the community it intends to serve, technology introduction, and re-design.

Students will have an opportunity to design and prototype sustainable products that address a significant health needs while simultaneously assessing social venture potential in the communities they are trying to serve.