Tag: News and Events (page 11)

By Danielle Lum, Project Assistant & Mia Sanders, Storyteller

Hello there! Our names are Danielle Lum and Mia Sanders, and we’re members of the 2018 Innovation Hub Summer Team. Danielle just started in her position of Project Assistant, and Mia is continuing their role as Storyteller. As our first public duty, it’s our great pleasure to introduce to you our amazing summer team. Since the Innovation Hub’s inception two years ago, hundreds of students, staff, and faculty from across the university have come together to tackle challenges around improving student life here at UofT. We’re indebted to everyone who has contributed their valuable time and energy thus far, and we’re excited to build on their work at this juncture of the Innovation Hub’s evolution.

Choosing the team for this summer was not an easy task, but we couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out. We’re looking forward to a generative, activating, and challenging summer at the Innovation Hub. Keep reading to get to know our team!

By Margaryta Ignatenko, Innovation Hub Big Ideas Team Leader

Chill Spots was one of the ideas that emerged from last years Whole Student Development domain’s research. What if we could transform existing, underused spaces at a minimal cost to better meet student needs?

 By Igor Samardzic, Innovation Hub Events Leader

Come one, come all!!

Last year I had the pleasure of participating in the Innovation Hub as a volunteer and this year I am leading the events team! This is an incredible opportunity to get involved and see change happen in real time!! I hope to see some of you folks join us on this journey.

The Innovation Hub at U of T is currently assembling teams of students and staff to explore the viability of 5 ideas that came out of an extensive consultation, ideation and prototyping process last year to discover ideas that will improve the student experience. This is a great opportunity to join a cross-disciplinary team of students and staff working together towards a common purpose, of creating a sense of community and connectedness among our students, staff and faculty.  The following ideas emerged and gained traction:

 By Apefa Adjivon, Innovation Hub Connector

Hello! My Name is Apefa Adjivon, and I am the current connector for the Innovation Hub. I have the great privilege of introducing myself and the I-hub team to you! Since August, we’ve all been spending time getting to know each other and working with one another to improve the student experience. Everyone on the team is extremely dedicated to their work, and excited to serve their peers and the greater UofT community.

So, starting with myself…

By Shonakshi Chaubal, University of Toronto’s Hult Prize Campus Director

The Hult Prize is the world’s largest student case competition for social entrepreneurs. In partnership with the United Nations, the Hult Prize Foundation hosts college and university events around the world in search of the next game-changing start-up. Each year, the Hult Prize awards one million dollars in start-up funding to the team of students that develops the most radical and breakthrough idea to solve one of our world’s toughest social challenges. The goal of the competition is to foster social entrepreneurship among the brightest, youngest minds across the world, and each year, wonderful solutions are developed and presented.

By the Innovation Hub Implementation Leaders: Gabriele Simmons, Vincent Tu and Clara Luca as well as Max Tojicic a second year student participant at the retreat.

As Innovation Hub Implementation Team Leaders, Clara, Vincent and I (Gabriele), had the chance to attend Student Life’s Re-Imagining Leadership Retreat in Peterborough – it was a fantastic opportunity! We got to meet other student leaders like ourselves at the retreat and develop skills in collaboration, innovation and thinking “outside of the box”. We met a fantastic collection of people from across the tri-campuses and gained both new friends and new perspectives! Here are some of the highlights…

 By: William Pullen, Innovation Hub Summer Team Member, second year political science and history student.

Last Friday, the Innovation Hub’s Summer Team had the pleasure of attending Rotman I-Think’s Celebration of Learning. The event was centered around the incredible work that has been occurring in K-12 classrooms that have embraced Integrative Thinking. The event also celebrated the teachers that helped bring integrative thinking into their classrooms.

By: Michelle Johnstone, Knowledge Management Team, first year Masters of Information student.

Last Wednesday, the Innovation Hub Summer Student Team met for the first time. It was the first (truly) nice day of spring, and we got right down to business and took each other on a “reverse campus tour,” in which each of us showed our new team members a spot on campus that was meaningful to us.

The Innovation Hub is pleased to announce that we are hosting an Ideas Workshop on June 5th and 9th for students, faculty and staff to:

• Take our prototype ideas and explore how they might come to life at U of T, what challenges we might encounter, how we might measure impact and what practical next steps need to be taken to move these ideas forward.
• Help us start to think about prospective project teams for each of these ideas.

We invite students, faculty and staff from the U of T community to join us as we expand our thinking about these ideas in a fun and collaborative setting.  Each participant will choose one of the ideas (listed below) to workshop.

Guest Post by: Scott McAuley, Communications Coordinator at UofT’s Impact Centre 

The desire to enable innovation is all around us. From university campuses to corporate headquarters to government chambers, new programs are springing up that are designed to help bring ideas into reality, and reality into practice. The University of Toronto is no different. The University has always been an innovator, from the isolation of insulin to creating the pacemaker, but today’s technologies and markets provide new opportunities that require a new way of thinking.

The Impact Centre is a research institute at the University of Toronto that is dedicated to bringing science to society. We create and deliver events, programs and courses that are all designed to introduce students to innovation and entrepreneurship as well as give them the support they need to make those dreams a reality.

Some recent and upcoming programs: