2020 Innovation Competition & Award Winners

2020 Winning Projects

• Mentor Me: Students & Alumni Engaged Together (Brenna Martin, Professional Staff)

  Knowing how important it is to network for that dream job or the next co-op adventure- it’s important to start the process early. As students enter college, they have many opportunities to engage socially in a variety of activities and build community among their peers, but what about professional socialization. With the importance of mentorship being a key factor in an individual’s success, it would be the goal of this innovation to build an active and engaged community of students and alumni learning together, making personal, supportive connections from the beginning of each individual’s academic journey. With 75% of executives stating that mentorship was critical in their career development, it’s important that CCI create a specific opportunity for students to participate in an organized, focused, and straight-forward form of networking, mentorship, and community engagement. Success breeds success- and individual success is CCI’s success.

• Quarterly CCI Cultural Celebrations (Chris Spangler, Professional Staff)

  Quarterly CCI Cultural Celebrations are designed to bring the College together in celebration of our diversity and in service to building a more engaged and informed community. College community celebrations would center on a cultural community represented at the College (or more broadly the University). Attendees would be encouraged to take ownership in bringing the theme to life (thematic food, music, etc.) with CCI supplementing the menu with culturally relevant offerings. These events would bring to life unique perspectives and experiences while demonstrating a commitment to welcoming and supporting all cultures and ethnicities within the College. These events create a safe place for individual expression and conversation while bringing to the forefront a positive celebration of the wide range of backgrounds and experiences that ultimately define the CCI experience.

• Lights! Camera! CCI! (Sabah Lala UG IS, Sanobar Lala UG IS)

  At CCI students learn best through hands on learning, but we also know that online YouTube videos are lifesavers when it comes to understanding difficult concepts. Online videos are used as a medium around the globe to create a community of content creators and their viewers. I want to bring that community to CCI. The idea is to use our state-of-art-space at 3675 to foster content creation. An area can be set up where students can go in and record themselves through a video camera (provided by CCI). The topics can include teaching fellow classmates about a difficult coding topic, sharing a good/bad co-op experience, giving underclassmen advice on scholarship applications or sharing best practices when coding in a certain language. This way we can highlight the accomplishments of our content creators but also create a welcoming online community where no student is shy to ask questions. These videos can be uploaded to a CCI YouTube channel and will truly help build CCI's online network.

• Computer Science For All (Saurav Singh, UG Computer Science)

  With the incorporation of computer science across various fields, more people than ever are interested in learning at least the basic CS skills. To address this opportunity, CCI will hold workshops on various introductory CS topics that will be open to all Drexel students, faculty and staff. The workshops will be held bi-weekly in the Quorum. CCI students and faculty will be running the workshops on a voluntary basis. Each month the bi-weekly workshops will focus on teaching one basic computer science skill to the attendees. The aim of the proposed project will be to provide an opportunity for non-CCI students and professionals to learn some basic computer science skills that they will be able to use in their specific fields. The project will also aim to foster collaborations between CCI and other programs at Drexel. Finally, the project will serve as a helpful resource for CCI students, especially freshmen to strengthen their knowledge, skills, and interest in computer science.