On Dec. 1, four Rowan University students were officially inducted into the University Innovation Fellows (UIF) program at a pinning ceremony in Business Hall. The UIF program recognizes innovative, entrepreneurship-minded students globally who want to make change on their college campuses. Students undergo a virtual six-week training program that is managed by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. This year marks the fifth cohort of Rowan UIF students, who include juniors Josh de Guzman, Resty Mercado, Marissa Pestritto, and senior Erica Tran.
The newly inducted Fellows will be advised by Dr. Michael Dominik, a professor from the Rowan School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. In April of next year, Dr. Dominik and the Fellows will be traveling to the University of Twente in the Netherlands, where they will meet up with 237 new Fellows. These Fellows represent 63 higher education institutions and 15 countries.
The four students chosen this year were nominated by faculty members, interviewed by Dr. Dominik, and went forth with the training process. The Fellows are proposing a Rowan Multicultural Innovation Day to be held in March 2024.
“They felt that in our world today, that our world and thus our campus could benefit through having greater cultural understanding, and respect. And that as a foundation for innovative collaboration would offer an opportunity for additional improvements to our campus life and our campus community,” Dominik said.
Junior Biomedical Engineering major Josh de Guzman explained the inspiration behind this project.
“Our cultural clubs, we believe, have a really great potential to bring a lot of diversity to this event. It’s going to involve a lot of outreaching but that’s kind of where we’re going. And the purpose of doing that is to promote that, like, the celebration of our differences among each other. If we were able to unite as one, we would be able to accomplish so many different things,” de Guzman said.
Resty Mercado, also a junior Biomedical Engineering major, described what makes this year’s cohort unique to Rowan.
“So essentially, we’re going to have lots of different clubs or organizations come by and showcase their identity through their culture, whether that be through food, maybe a performance of some sorts music. Our past fellowship projects were really professional-based. We want to think of more community building, something more fun, something that more people will go to,” Mercado said.
While Mercado and de Guzman expressed the difficulty of the training process, they are eager to now officially begin their work as Fellows.
“At first I kind of didn’t know how to feel about it just because I didn’t really recognize the magnitude of what it means to be a part of this Fellow network. But now I feel like I’m just really encouraged because after our pinning ceremony, Dr. Dominik connected us with the other past Fellows from the past cohorts, and just showed us how excited they were for us, and it was just like, I want to put my best into this and try to make it as good as I can,” de Guzman said.
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