The Resilient, Innovative, Sustainable, Economies via University Partnerships, RISE-UP, program is inviting University of Rhode Island students to take part in their Innovation and Entrepreneurship Challenges going until April 22.
Each college at URI is sponsoring a real-world challenge that students can choose from to submit a pitch for. Each challenge is centered around a real-world problem concerning innovation, sustainability and businesses that students can propose solutions to.
Students who apply are not restricted to completing the challenge designed by their college of study, but rather, are encouraged to work between the different colleges and partner up with a student in an alternate college, said Ancita Sherel, the program manager at RISE-UP.
“The IE challenges bring in an element of practicality where students can take what they’ve learned from their classrooms and not be restricted in terms of it just being a theoretical approach, but instead they are invited to work across colleges,” Sherel said.
These challenges also serve as a way for students to network with employers and businesses. Leaders in the industry who relate to the problem students have chosen to solve will serve as part of the judging panel. Others on the panel are the dean of the college that sponsored the challenge and a member of the RISE-UP team.
Winners for each challenge will be provided with pathways to potentially make their ideas a reality, Sherel said.
If the winning solution is one that is able to be implemented at the University of Rhode Island Campus, then Sherel is confident that it will be. For instance, with the “Designs For All: Engineering Better Solutions For People With Disabilities” challenge which encourages students to address the daily problems people with disabilities face daily, the winning solution to the problem has the potential to be implemented here at URI.
On Friday, teams must submit what challenge they are choosing to complete. On April 5, final submissions for the competition are due.
From here, finalists will go on to pitch their presentations to the judging panel. April 22 will be the final pitch night for contestants.
There are nine challenges for students to choose from that cover a large array of entrepreneurial problems.
One of the challenges is the “R&R: Repurpose & Redistribute” challenge sponsored by URI’s first lady, Mary Parlange. The goal of this challenge is to find new ways to repurpose inorganic waste items.
Another one of the challenges that Sherel said is one of her favorites is the “Imagining Your Own Utopia: Green Rooftop Design” challenge where students are invited to design a rooftop for Lippitt Hall. Students will work on finding a way to start implementing green rooftops on URI’s buildings.
Another RISE-UP challenge is “The Impact Challenge” hosted by the College of Business.
“It’s not really focused on anything specifically, so it lets students be creative and come up with any idea they want,” said Megan Pruskowski, a student marketing intern for RISE-UP.
For this challenge, students are invited to create an idea that can make a large-scale impact that deals with social issues, technological interventions or sustainability.
This is the first year the RISE-UP program is holding this contest. The program is aiming to have 100 participants across a variety of majors, Pruskowski said.
RISE-UP hopes to continue to host these challenges yearly with a new challenge each year. Additionally, it is expected that the winning ideas will be implemented at URI if possible.
While coming up with these solutions may seem intimidating, above all, Sherel wants to inform students that these challenges are supposed to be fun and that they will receive assistance from the staff along the way.
If you are interested in taking part in these challenges, make sure to visit the program’s website to read more about the challenges and sign up to participate.