>> I'm very excited to
introduce this panel
on fostering students
and innovation.
I think that this is
a challenging topic
because everybody is very
excited about innovation.
But there's a lot of question.
First of all, how to
make innovation happen?
Summer before last, I was
invited to a keynote conference
down at Stanford which was an
international conference looking
at whether or not there could
be a Silicon Valley replicated
anywhere else in the world.
And the notion behind that and
they actually held in the middle
of the conference, an
Oxford style debate,
where some people said, "Yes",
and listed all the reasons
that it would be possible
to have the kind of climate
and culture and everything that
occurred that made the sort
of innovation that we think
of going on down there occur.
And some people felt that it was
not possible to have that happen
in other places either in
this country or in the world.
And so that was really
interesting to hear the facets
of what people thought
really went into innovation
and the kind of climate
that we have to have,
the kind of intellectual
pursuits,
the kind of nurturing
that occurs.
So this panel focuses
not on how this occurs
for individuals themselves
but how they foster
that in their students.
So I'm very excited
to hear what they have
to say about this today.
First speaker on the
panel is Marty Linder.
And I think he's
known to most of you
from one capacity or another.
He's a Professor of
Design and Industry here
in San Francisco
State University.
He received his Bachelor of Fine
Arts at Philadelphia College
of Arts and his MFA at
Cranbrook Academy of Art.
He's an expert on design
for the health care industry
and also the Executive
Director of what we call iDo,
International Design
Outreach Project,
which promotes education
through design
in schools in the Bay Area.
He's an active speaker on
topics including Teaching
for Creativity, Design
Education, Technologies
and Rituals that
Impact Collaboration
for the Knowledge Worker, Risk,
Experimentation, Innovation,
and Industrial and
Interface Design
for Explosive Detection
Airport Security Systems.
I think we're all quite
interested in that also.
But today, he's going to focus
on some of his work with iDo
because he is the Founder
and Executive Director of iDo
and he leads an organization
that delivers experiential
interdisciplinary learning
programs to underserved
public high school students.
iDo's program strive to
train students as innovators
by fostering curiosity,
promoting creativity
and building self confidence
within the participants.
Marty?
>> Thank you, Dr. Rosser.
That was a wonderful
introduction.
Thank you and thank you
Dr. Terkin [phonetic]
for inviting me to this.
Can you all hear me okay?
So, yeah, hi friends.
I just recently gave a
much larger presentation
that this is a slice
of at Yonsei University
in Seoul, Korea.
So fasten your seatbelt,
so I had about an hour
and 15 minutes for that.
I think we have about 20.
So I've added a beep.
But, you know, fasten
tight because here we go.
So, two things I'll
be talking about here,
one is just about creativity
'cause obviously you need
creativity to be innovative
and then I'll be talking
about the Industrial Design
Outreach Program to you.
Just to remind everybody,
people have traits
and there're traits
for creativity.
By the way, the backdrop
there is an image
of a three-dimensional construct
that one of my students design
to visually communicate
a mechanical action.
So these are some of the things
that I'm doing here at school
to promote creativity to my
students and that's just one
of the projects I did.
One of the traits that people
have that are really successful
in the creative fields
is they can take risk.
They're diverging thinkers.
They have an ability to
deal with uncertainty.
They're open to outside stimuli.
They are persistent.
Their libidinal energy is high.
And they have propensity
for passion in their work.
They can really get
in to it deeply.
It means really a
great deal to them.
And so they're very
focused in that way.
By the way, that backdrop
is another three-dimensional
construct where I brought
students through a process
of visually communicating
a taste, okay.
And again, the three-dimensional
paper composition and lot
of creativity here
at this university.
To promote creativity
here at the university
in another context, it could
be business, K through 12,
whatever that might be.
There're physical environments
that you could develop
to promote creativity.
This backdrop image
by the way is a studio
that was build with-- by
graduate students and myself
over a four-year period that
now resides in the design
and industry building.
I got in funding, we did
research, I help pay for some
of the product furniture that
is in there, so forth and so
on to create a very
creative working environment.
You want it to be
flexible, formal, casual.
You want unique influence to
surround you so you can draw
from things easily
and constantly.
Ah, sorry.
You would like to have some kind
of visual, audio stimulations
when it's appropriate.
You want really good light, you
know, controlled in some degree.
Working in a cave only works
for a very small
select group of people.
It works for some
but not for all.
You also want to construct
social environments
to promote creativity.
You want to make sure
that people understand
that great things can happen.
And in each one of us,
we have the propensity
to do something great
that failure is okay.
Failure is a tough word but
that you can make mistakes.
You learn from them.
You grow from that and then you
reapply it to the next stage
of what you're developing.
You're open-minded and
that's a very hard thing
to bring people to, but
you really want it develop
and people open-minded thinking.
You wanted to be-- I call
it organic disciplinary.
You want to know as much as you
can about everything, right?
And if you don't know it,
get all the people together
that know the things you
don't know and have the tools
to be able to find the
things that you don't know.
So in the field of design,
I'm often put into scenarios
where I have to know about a lot
of different things or I have
to find the people that
know about these things
and bring them into the table.
And the world we live in today,
I think that's really key
and teaching students
about that, the need for
and the value of it is key.
We want diverse in
race, culture,
gender, sexual orientation.
Obviously books like the
Creative Class by Florida,
so forth and so on speak about
that in detail about what kind
of environments do
really promote creativity
and innovation.
San Francisco, Silicon Valley
being one of those for these
and many other reasons.
And you want to create an
environment of positive energy
and I'm a real believer and that
I believe positiveness breed
more positiveness.
That's not to say I or
other shouldn't be critical.
You have to be critical
and honest but you do have
to have a really positive
environment to be able to teach,
you know, working in and trust.
When people ask me how do
I get students be creative,
what's the most important
thing, one,
is you have to develop
trust with them
because ultimately you
want them to take risk.
And how are they going to take
risk unless you have developed
some trust to allow for a
context for them to take risk,
possibly fall down but let them
know you're there to pick them
up again or their peers are
there to pick them up again
and help them move forward.
There's a variety of processes
in terms of creativity
that I surely teach the to
the students and I bring
to my practices well, from
exploration to research,
to ideation, to prototyping, to
experimentation, to analysis,
to refinement, to testing,
so forth and so on.
And there's a number of
different of these kinds
of design methodologies.
That's kind of the key
one that's used today.
But there're others.
I believe that for
true invention kind
of that light bulb going
of, quite often happens
from the individual that's
working in their kind
of own environment who's
really motivated to explore,
to experiment and
push things forward.
So it really depends what kind
of creative output are you
looking for and what kind
of methods do you
employ in that.
And I'll be fine to talk to
you about these and, you know,
afterwards another day because
really our presentations on this
that go into more detail.
Some of the work that the
students here have worked
on as grad students, research
students, as well as alumni,
and I worked with a lot of our
alumni today, is one of my years
of expertise is doing the
machine human interface
for systems that
provide security
in transportation today.
This is for airport
transportation
and we've been rewarded with
international awards for this
and these products are
all over the world today.
This one, we just
finished recently.
Again, these are mostly with
alumni from San Francisco State.
We've developed recently
car scanners, train,
a cargo, so forth and so on.
Mostly they use x-ray computer
tomography type technologies.
The most recent one for train is
also finding nuclear signatures.
We design the experience,
the systems, the CONOPS,
their protocols, the tangible,
the virtual interfaces.
Recently with Herman Miller,
I designed a line of sitting
that deals with
healthcare-related issues,
that tried to reduce the amount
of pathogens that are dispersed
from patient to patient
in relationship
to the sit they're in.
And again, one of our
alumni worked with this.
This is now all over the world.
In fact, I'm going to
be going up to Utah
at their medical health,
their mental health facility
'cause Herman Miller is going
to engage us at another
project in that area.
And as I understand it, the
hospital is filled with these.
So I look forward to
that next Thursday.
Also, myself and a group of
grad students as well as support
from the college as well
as the department help me
develop a rapid prototyping
facility where we
have 3D printers,
we have lasers, so
forth and so on.
And on the right
side there's one
of the students constructing an
illumination piece using a lot
of these technologies.
So, you know, you have
to have the tools also
to promote innovation.
So now focus on the iDO program.
I think that's, you know,
mostly what I'm here about.
I began this in 2003 but it was
really created with a colleague
of mine as well as one of
our students who's gone on
and done wonderful
things actually.
So three of us through
brainstorming, this discourse,
created the underpinnings of
what the iDO program is today,
and by the way, Industrial
Design Outreach program.
And this is just
one of the students
with a high school student.
Influence of mine, my parents.
One of the key things
they taught me is
to help others help themselves.
They taught me many
other things.
And by the way, my mom
being really nurturing;
and my dad pretty
tough critical,
always working to satisfy him.
Who knows if I have
ever really done that,
but lot of lessons there.
Thank you very much for that.
Ma, I really won
today, thank you.
[laughter] I think my
greatest lessons in life,
all the education, real life
experiences is from my family,
my wife raising my
children, my dogs.
That's really where I've
learnt a lot about life.
You know, my daughter
who's had a very kind,
who fits in the world well.
And my son that, you know, fits
in the world in his own way.
And wow, the lessons
are profound from that.
And my wife who's really one
of the great women in the world
who really is just
so generous to people
that everybody else
doesn't want to see.
Mentors, the Industrial Design
Outreach program is based
in mentorship model.
This is one of my mentors.
He's just a gifted sculptor that
I apprenticed with in New Hope,
Pennsylvania in the 1970s and
it really started my career
in the field of design.
He was critical,
he was demanding,
and he was really
very nurturing.
And I think I've taken
a little piece of him
in the Industrial Design
Outreach program today.
The university, San
Francisco State University,
what's our mission?
Social justice.
I'm always looking at missions,
analyzing it, understanding it,
and then try to work
that into the programs
that I've been developing here
at the university as well.
I think it's awesome.
I'm really looking forward to
continue to develop it with all
of you here at the university.
And I think we all
define it in our own way.
Some of our missions with
iDO is we promote curiosity,
foster creativity,
build self-esteem.
And by the way, it's a
learning environment for all.
High schools, teachers,
administrators, professors,
high school students,
university students,
we reach underserved teenagers.
That's where our focus is.
Though we've worked with
middle school students,
it's experiential education,
real project-based
active learning.
And again, the core of it is
your university students are the
people that create these
programs, deliver it,
and the ones that really connect
with the university students.
And we're actionists.
You know, we definitely
do research.
We do that.
But we really get out there
and really do what
we say we want to do.
We're not just, you know,
necessarily keeping
it within a Word file.
We're out there in the field,
in the world really delivering.
And I think that's
awesome for everybody.
The university students
really connect
with the high school students
and the university
students gaining so much
from creating something
and delivering it
into the real world.
That's who we reach.
Those are our high
school students.
A lot of our focus right now is
Thurgood Marshall High School,
very diverse background,
minority students.
We also have a lot of students
that are economically
disadvantaged.
Why? I don't know why we
get them, but we have a lot
of students with disabilities.
But there's a lot of discourse
as to what that really means.
Sometimes I wonder.
If they don't put the students
in disability categories
because they want to give them
more time taking statewide
testings of that nature,
and other discussion,
a lot of our English
learners as well.
So that gives you
a little context.
By the way, they're
smart, they're motivated,
they're creative if they're
given the opportunity
and the context both
physical, social contest--
context to be successful.
Our university students who
I worked with so many today,
you know what they look like.
You know the diversity of them.
But I do want to emphasize this.
The cream, the people
that I work
with the most are students
are a little bit older
undergraduate students.
They've seen the world.
They're highly motivated.
They really understand the
power of giving back and how
that affects their learning.
Those are the students that I've
mostly worked with over the 10--
last 10 years on this project.
This is Judy Chu.
Judy was one of the high
school students we reach.
She's now in the Design
and Industry Department.
She's now in the iDO program.
And last semester
she delivered one
of the highest level programs
to high school students
that I've seen in
the last 10 years.
She's an absolute star and
that's just some of the work
of the high school students
that she delivered her project
to which was this--
a book about travel.
Phenomenally successful, a real
smart lady, and now we're kind
of full circle with it.
A reach-- We've reached out--
hard to count, over 1200
teenagers, over 250--
I think we're over 300
university mentors, and annually
about 7,000 hours of volunteer
time is what we deliver annually
to this program.
What's key is we have weekly
meetings, summer, winter, fall,
and spring, and we take off a
week for you know, the winter
and we take a week off,
you know, in the spring.
But we're always meeting on
these Thursdays because it takes
over a year to develop the
experience that we deliver.
And the high schools--
by the way, this is a party
in my off-campus studio.
We're not always so happy.
Let's just-- with cake and booze
and whatever else is in there.
You know, this is
just a schedule.
We do a huge amount of planning.
We have a master schedule
indicating everyday,
every lecture, every
demonstration, who's leading it,
what tools, what materials.
It's really well-organized
in that regard 'cause
we're really delivering it
to the real world.
And if these young students,
these high-schoolers
see anything wrong
with what we're doing,
they're going to point it out.
So we try to be as
organized as possible.
But of course we have
to improvise as well.
Some of it, we developed
deep lectures.
We do things in material
science.
We do demonstrations
and brainstorming.
We work on students to
discover through prototyping.
And again, this could
be 2D, 3D, 4D.
We have them do a lot of writing
actually, a lot of research
to be able to develop
their points of view,
analyze, so forth and so on.
We created a laboratory at
Thurgood Marshall High School,
the iDO lab where we
have a variety of tools
in that environment for
them to be able to explore,
experiment as well as
develop their concepts.
We now have a CNC laser that
I've been able to raise money
for this and other
things in there.
And as you can see, this--
you're just seeing
the box of it.
But they're so engaged.
It's like magic to them to
see their designs realized
through some kind
of an automated manufacturing
procedure.
They're just completely
zoned in.
We just got a 3D printer,
Dimension 3D Printer
in a relationship with City
College friends of mine
over there and this is Chris
Morlock to the right actually.
He works with me on a lot of
my industrial design projects.
I met him day one, 12 years
ago at this university
and he's been with
me ever since.
He's brilliant.
He's creative.
He's so charming to be with.
And here he is giving back
into the high schools as well.
Chris Morlock, I can't
say enough of-- about him.
Ah, I got a little film.
Ah, just lost that.
Let's try this again.
Let's-- Hopefully
this works here.
>> There is an explicit goal
for the kids to create a lamp
that they can bring home.
There's a solar panel.
There're 30 lights
attached to a string.
There're longer pieces
and shorter pieces
connecting to each other.
>> We actually show the
students a structure of a lamp
and we have them recreate
that same structure.
>> And they were able to see
how you use these different
lampshades that may-- created
out of the Illustrator to kind
of inspire them to use
Illustrator themselves
and do different shapes and
different sizes of shapes.
>> The first few
weeks allowed them
to see what they
could do to pieces.
And once we moved away
from that in later weeks
and they were able to
create their own structures
that they became more playful.
They really expanded into
new territory that we
as mentors haven't
even gotten into.
>> So we're allowing them--
with certain parameters,
building the structure and
then allowing them to go kind
of crazy with building a shape.
We brought in some
inspiration and teaching them
about fashion and architecture.
>> Jenny did a history of
fashion presentation which kind
of inspired the students
to develop their shapes.
Greg [phonetic] came in
and he did a presentation
on rapid visualization.
>> He was just showing them
how quickly you can do a rough
sketch of your ideas.
There has been some robots.
There are some that have taken
with patterns from fashion.
Some are really clean
structures and we have some
that are really out there.
>> There's one iteration and
then we hit them with a critique
and they all have to talk,
which is something they
don't always like to do.
After the critique, then they
have a more solid understanding
of what they want to do
with their lamp design.
>> Cassandra has done really
great where it's inspired
by the instrument, opera house,
and just really pushing
it further
than what we would think.
You know, she can
easily just make it
like exactly like
the opera house.
But instead, she's, you know,
kind of using just the elements
of the way these structures.
>> I think they've realized
the potential and a lot
of pieces doing even we have
and they've come up with designs
that we even didn't think of.
>> These lamps are
just a small example
that if they put their mind
to something, they can do it.
>> Maybe we won't
tap every student.
Maybe we won't reach
every student.
But it's nice to know that
sometimes there are somebody
that you're going to touch and
maybe that one student will end
up going nto college and--
>> That-- That's your students
and that was one of dozens
of projects that we've been
involved in delivering.
Great. We have data
on our success.
But I'd rather look
at these quotes.
This is one of our
university students.
iDo is like a miracle,
a dream that many
of us may have imagined
to do one day.
But such a dream would rarely
come true in a long list
of so many selfish
needs and wishing this
that we crave to reach.
And this is one of our
recent high school students.
We have many of these.
I was not going to
college, since iDo,
I have applied to five colleges.
And we have long lists of that.
We do-- This is a
project, iDo Columbia.
So one of our university
students, graduate student
from our department delivered
this in Bogota, Columbia
and was very successful
and got one
of the CSU Statewide
Research Awards
and we're very proud of her.
And there's tremendous risk that
she was involved in doing that.
You know, it's tricky
place there down there.
We delivered to-- these middle
school elementary school,
45 minutes here on
campus, duct tape,
they walked out of there
designing and making a wallet.
We worked with literature
classes
on helping them develop visual
languages drawn from literature
that they're reading and
apply it to products.
We're teaching them
history of architecture
like the Russian Constructivist
and then applying it
into these three-dimensional
products.
We're teaching them about
sound, about manufacturing,
these are speakers, using
CNC laser technology
to produce them.
This is the bench that's out
right there, in the hall there,
that there're three of
'em now in the Bay Area.
That's garnished a lot
of attention, detail.
And now we are going to have
for the first time
an iDo Korea program
where university professor from
Yonsei University is working
out with me 'cause they
have many of similar issues
that we have here and that
is now already underway.
So we're going international
with the program.
Student awards, program
awards, but I think I need
to end it now and there we go.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
You can do it?
>> Sure. [Inaudible Remark]
>> Well, thank you
very much, Marty.
It's really exciting when I
see you in Senate Breakfast
and various other venues.
I've always known
that iDo existed
but I didn't really know
some of the facets of it.
So this is most interesting
to me.
I know that folks have
many questions for you,
but we're going to hold those
until after we've heard from all
of our speakers and then we can
have a more synthetic question
and answer session.
So it's now my pleasure to
introduce to you Gabriela Weaver
who is a Professor of Chemistry
and serves as the Jerry
and Rosie Semler Director
of the Discovery
Learning Research Center
at Purdue University.
She received her BS in Chemistry
in-- from the university--
from Caltech and her
PhD in Chemical Physics
from the University of
Colorado at Boulder.
She joined the Chemistry faculty
at University of Colorado
in Denver in 1994, and then
the Chemistry faculty at Purdue
in 2001 where she was
promoted to professor.
And she's been Associate
Head of the department.
But her research is
in chemistry education
at the undergraduate level
and science education
in the K through 12 schools.
Her work in educational
research initially focused
on using inquiry-based
methods for teaching science
and on supplementing
traditional instruction
with technology tools.
She developed novel
approaches for use
in undergraduate
physical chemistry classes
and her work carried
out with middle school
and high school teachers.
Since 2004, she has directed
the NSF-funded Center
for Authentic Science
Practice in Education
which is a consortium of 17
universities and 2-year colleges
that developed and
implemented a teaching approach
to provide first and second
year undergraduate students
with authentic research
experiences as part
of their laboratory course work.
So please join me in welcoming
Dr. Weaver to the podium.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you Dr. Rosser
for that introduction.
And thank you for the invitation
to be here with you today.
This is a fascinating set of
talks from my perspective.
I am interested in the way
that we have some overlaps
in the themes with respect
to promoting innovation
with our students and
yet we're coming at it
from such different
perspectives.
This program, the CASPiE program
that I'm going to talk to you
about grew out of my own
long series of projects
in which our goal is
really to engage students
in the real process of science.
Interesting, Marty, that you've
talked about the characteristics
of creativity and the
environment, the characteristics
of the environment that need
to be there to promote that.
In many cases, what we find
with science education is
that students are
in a classroom.
They receive lecture-based
instruction.
They will go to a laboratory
to do the "hands-on."
But many times their laboratory
experience is very prescriptive
and students walk away
with the impression
that all experimentation is
actually done in this way,
that you have a set
of instructions,
that you follow it, and if you
did it right and you were good,
you got the right answer, right?
And in fact, science is
not at all like that.
Science is, in fact, a
creative process coming at it
from a scientific standpoint
that this idea that we have
to promote the belief that
great things can happen.
Absolutely, that
underpins science
and that failure is okay.
If failure was not okay,
we wouldn't have any scientific
discoveries in the entire field
of science and science-related
activities wouldn't exist.
Failure is what it's all
about and figuring out what
that failure means and
then moving on from there.
And we failed to teach
that to our students
in traditional types of
scientific instruction.
So the CASPiE project is
one way in which we tried
to address this by
engaging students
in authentic research
projects as part
of their laboratory course.
So the laboratory instruction
that the students get
for their mainstream
chemistry courses--
and I'll talk about
how this has grown
to other disciplines as well.
But in that laboratory
instruction,
they're no longer going in and
doing these one-off experiments
with prescriptive
set of directions
but they're actually
involved in research.
And the strategy for doing
this involves three parts;
the actual experimental
modules that are written
by practicing researchers,
access to research
grade-instrumentation.
I'll talk about the
instrumentation network.
And that also touches on
something that Marty mentioned
with respect to giving students
the tools for being creative.
So this is giving students
the access to the tools
that scientists use in
order to really do science.
And then creating
a research group
or scientific community
environment
with peer-led team learning.
Is that a familiar term
to anybody in the room?
Peer-led team learning.
So we didn't invent that.
We borrowed it from
the PLTL group
but we really developed a
laboratory-based approach to it.
So we defined authentic practice
as laboratory experiences
in which students are actually
engaged in the generation
of new scientific
knowledge and this differs
from inquiry-based
teaching which is something
that many people have heard of
and many people have
their own definition for.
Inquiry-based teaching is
a way of teaching students
and engaging students in the
thought process of science
and it's an incredibly valuable
and potent way to teach.
And ours differs from that and
that it's one more step out.
The students are
actually engaged
in the real scientific
knowledge generation.
We don't know the answer and are
just making them try to find it.
Nobody knows the answer
to whatever it is
they're working on.
It is a new project.
And the research modules have
really two critical components.
The first being that
these still have to fit
within the constraints of
our classroom schedules
or our laboratory schedules.
So students have to be able to
do these research experiences
over a period of
weeks, once a week
or in chunks of three hours.
That's a big challenge
for a scientist to figure
out how do we engage students
in this scientific
research project,
but they can only do it
three hours at a time,
but still has to be authentic.
So, going full circle on the
creativity piece of this,
there's also a lot of
creativity that has to come
from the scientists
themselves, the researcher,
in figuring out how to extract
the important parts of that.
You know, we're not trying
to teach all the fundamental
concepts having to do
with this research project,
but really to engage students
in some part of it where
they can be productive
and can contribute.
And that goes into
critical component 2.
I'm pointing over there, but
you're looking over here.
That the data that the students
collect or perhaps the samples
that they generate will actually
contribute in a real way
to the research of
that module author.
The peer-led team learning part
of this is what really mimics
that research group type of
environment which is the basis
of much academic research
where you work with peers,
some of whom have
more information
than you do more experience
and we have tried to reproduce
that by having undergraduate
students be involved
with the students who are
currently in the experience,
in the CASPiE experience.
Now these undergraduate
students have either done CASPiE
in the past or have
been involved
in undergraduate research.
And they meet outside
of class with a group
of six to eight students.
And that's the students in lab
work in teams of three to four.
So they meet with two of
those teams and they talk
about what went on in
the previous lab period,
what they think about for the
next lab period, what are some
of the ideas that they have.
So it's really kind of a guided
instruction but done completely
by these undergraduate
peer leaders.
And the peer leaders are not
involved in any of the grading.
They're not TAs for the course.
They're not involved in
developing the course.
They are there to be the
mentors for the students.
So we build in that mentorship.
And then the network
instrumentation model,
interestingly, this was
a project all of its own
and we've written book
chapters and a number
of different articles just about
the instrumentation network.
But the basic idea here, and I'm
going to try to use this pointer
from here, is that we
have, say, an instrument,
and this is a research
level instrument,
and it's too expensive to
take one of these and put one
in each undergraduate
laboratories.
So we have one in a central
location and we connect
that to an instrument server.
Now if you go into a
modern research laboratory
and you are going to
use an instrument,
you actually will sit down in
front of a computer to do that.
You very rarely are going to
find an instrument these days
that you're going to go
and you're actually going
to twiddle knobs and open
doors and that sort of thing.
So this setup here is now
controlled through the internet,
so that the student
on the client side
simply has a web plugin.
They don't need to have
any specialized software
on their computer.
And they can connect
right to that server
and run that instrument.
And then all of their files,
all the data files are dumped
into a processing farm here and
then they can access their files
to work on their files.
The reason this part, the
blue part is important is
that the instrument,
being a real instrument,
can only really be accessed
by one user at a time
and it's locked up in terms of--
you know, you can't have
somebody else trying
to run their samples.
So we tried to limit
the amount of use here
to just run the sample,
dump out the data
and then the long process of
data analysis can take place
with many, many users
on these servers.
And this allows students
to really get their
"hands-on" the instruments
that scientists actually use
and to work with the
data the same way.
The lab is equipped with cameras
so that the students
can actually watch the
instrumentation while
they're collecting their data
and you can actually
have the data view
and the instrument
view simultaneously.
And some instruments are
more interesting to watch
than others, the ones that have
robotic auto samplers and so on.
This one happens to be a
closed laser system so the most
that you'll see here is the LED
is changing which interestingly
if you're doing it from some
other country in the world
and you see the LED is changing
and you know you're controlling
it, it's kind of exciting.
[laughter] So originally,
CASPiE was funded
by the chemistry division at
NSF and it was a five-year grant
that we extended a little
bit with no-cost extensions.
And so during that period,
we had about 6,000 students
at 17 institutions, one of which
is our partner in Australia go
through the CASPiE experience.
And this is for first and second
year of chemistry courses,
so both general chemistry
and organic chemistry.
And we also started
having workshops.
We found that there was a
lot of interest on the part
of faculty all over the country.
And so we had three
workshops and invited faculty
from two-year colleges
or research institutions
and everything in between to
come and learn about CASPiE.
So there are spinoff CASPiE
efforts that have taken place.
In addition, some
of our colleagues
in Atmospheric Sciences
at Purdue received
their own NSF grant
to implement CASPiE
in their department.
And then in Biology
at Purdue with--
they have additional partners.
They received both NSF and
then later on an HHMI grant
to implement CASPiE in Biology.
And that project actually
was one of the winners
of the 2012 Science Prize
for inquiry-based teaching.
So that's, you know,
start of feather
in our cap and CASPiE's cap.
We're now also branching
out into secondary school
applications of CASPiE.
I'm a scientist so
I have a lot of data
and I'll show you some of it.
And then if there are questions
about some of the data,
I can go into more
details on that.
But we did surveys at
the end of the semester.
And this is not just us
but our external evaluators
who were involved in this,
a large team of people
in collecting the
various types of data.
We did interviews in a project
where we compared traditional
laboratory instruction
with the CASPiE laboratory
instruction and then
with inquiry-based
laboratory instruction sort
of the traditional
inquiry-based, if I may.
And then we've just completed a
longitudinal study that looked
at about five or six years
of data and we focused on two
of the CASPiE institutions,
both of them large PhD
granting research institutions.
We looked at academic records
and then also did surveys
and interviews retrospectively
with students.
And finally, we're still
analyzing some data looking
at the group dynamics
when students work
in teams in CASPiE.
So just to give you a snapshot,
some of the statistical data
from the surveys in this set
that I'm going to show you,
we actually combined three
academic years of data
with almost a thousand
students in each
of the CASPiE and
control groups.
And we did what was
called factor analysis.
So we had a survey with
34 items on it and those,
through factor analysis,
broke down into six factors;
interest in chemistry or
science, perceived connections
between real life and the
science that they're learning
in the laboratory, the lab
practices perceived as similar
to real scientific work, the
perception that they are able
to learn the chemistry
content through what they did
in the lab, belief that they
can understand and do research
so there's sort of
self-view as scientists,
and then the perceived
value of collaborative work.
The blue are those
CASPiE participants
and the tan color
is the student--
or the students in the
traditional instruction courses.
And I swear this is real data.
The fact that we have
basically all of them
in the traditional courses
being negative is by itself,
even if the blue bars
were not there, by itself,
that's discouraging
and should be worrisome
to anybody in higher education.
Students walk out of their first
and second year chemistry
courses with poorer views
of their own abilities and
their perceptions of the content
than when they came in.
So that alone tells us
something needs to be done.
The fact that the blue bars are
actually on the positive side
of the scale or zero
for one of them
but non-statistically
significant is also encouraging
to us with respect
to the CASPiE program
that we were actually
able to have students be--
feel more positively
about their own abilities
and about the content
afterwards.
The one that's zero,
they're perceived learning
of chemistry content through
lab where it's negative
for the traditional
students but basically zero
for the students in CASPiE.
We followed up on
that because that's--
it's an interesting one.
And part of the issue there
is that at these institutions,
the exams in these
courses are generally based
on the lecture content.
So they're based on what
the students are learning
in lecture.
There's-- In the
literature we find
that most scientists believe
that the laboratory helps them
learn the lecture content.
There's no actual
empirical evidence for that.
But that's what most
science instructors believe.
Well, it turns out that when
you then ask the students about,
"Well, so did CASPiE help you
learn the chemistry content,"
they're thinking about, "Did
I do better on the exams?"
And in fact, it doesn't
affect their exam performance
because their exam
performance is based mostly
on their lecture performance
or lecture content learning.
Interestingly though,
the traditional students still
have a negative response there.
When we compared traditional
and-- how much time do I have?
>> About five.
>> Okay. When we compare a
traditional and research based
or CASPiE in an inquiry,
we saw that students
in the traditional group
generally are not able to talk
about the main idea of their
experiment extremely well.
When you move into inquiry,
you do have students that shift
into being able to
explain it by the end
of the experience
much better and that
that performance is very
similar to what you see
with the CASPiE students in
terms of the distribution.
When we asked students
in the three groups
about explaining the
result, what is the meaning
of the results of an experiment?
We get this distribution for
the traditional students,
which is to say, those
that understand it,
continue to understand
it; and those that don't,
continue not to understand it.
But none of them actually shift
from negative to positive.
Strangely, we see a similar
distribution for inquiry,
explaining the meaning
of the results.
But when we shift
to the CASPiE group,
we see a large group
even though they start
out with a similar distribution
here, a large number
of them shift from initially
being unclear on the meaning
of the results to
then being able
to explain meaning
of the results.
And I think this is the
most dramatic of all here,
having students talked
about what would be a logical
next step in an experiment
that you just work on.
And neither the traditional no
inquiry students really have
very good ways to do
that, to talk about that.
They really mostly talk about,
"Well, I would repeat it.
I would another more--
you know, another trial."
Whereas CASPiE students
are able to creatively come
up with experiments
that naturally ask
additional questions.
So, they're really getting into
that aspect of how do we learn
to ask questions in science.
We've done longitudinal
assessments and I will jump
to the summary here and that
is that when students opt
into the CASPiE experience
they tend to be--
there are self-selected group
that are stronger to begin with
and they maintain that
lead, no surprises there.
For those that are randomly
assigned to a CASPiE
versus the traditional
experience,
we found that as you
follow their grades overtime
into advanced science courses
in the same discipline,
both groups actually drop a
little bit, but those who were
in CASPiE drop significantly
less than those
who were not in CASPiE.
So, there's a sort of
protective effect with respect
to the grades later on.
The students in the randomly
assigned traditional group have
statistically significant
drops in their grades.
And it-- there are some evidence
that CASPiE may help reduce
the time to graduation.
We had some data that indicated
that did and some that data
that indicated that
there was no change.
So, we're still pursuing that.
And we did not see
any differences
in a stem major retention
or migration in and out
of the major, but we--
we're not sure if that is
because we've got a
sealing effect that the way
that student select their majors
at these two research
institutions may actually create
an effect that we
can't measure anyway.
I'd like to finish
with a student quotes.
This is the best kind
of data in my opinion.
It's exciting.
You don't get it,
i.e. the right result.
And you get a little
bit disappointed,
but you try to improvise.
And next time you end
up getting a good result
and you get excited.
So, you kind of want
to do it more.
I really like that we
got to learn something
about real research,
and the fact
that each lab actually built
on the one before instead
of every single lab being
different and not related.
You get a sense that
you're doing something
that hasn't impact on the
world as opposed to experiments
that are just to
teach you something.
As if that so bad,
but-- [Laughter]
>> Of course.
>> It was just very
motivating to think
that maybe we can find something
that might be use somewhere.
That idea itself was enough
to really feel fulfilled
from these kinds of
experiments and work.
And that's also a place where I
think we've got some overlapped
with the kinds of things that
you're doing, Marty, that,
you know, the students want to
know that they can contribute
in real ways and they
can do something.
I want to acknowledge our
partners and our support
by the National Science
Foundation and leave you
with this slide that if you'd
like to learn more about CASPiE,
this is the place to go.
[ Applause ]
>> Okay. We need to switch over.
[ Noise ]
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> I need to be-- yeah.
[Inaudible Remark] There.
[Inaudible Remark]
[ Noise ]
[ Silence ]
>> Thank you very
much, Gabriella.
That was-- You know, as we start
to think about the new semester
and getting our students
even more involved in class
than they have been in the past,
it's terrific to see these new
and really effective
methods of teaching
and challenging the students.
I think we're all use
to the inquiry based,
but this is really
taking it a step further.
So, I find that exciting
and have a lot
of questions about that.
It's now my pleasure to
introduce Dr. James G. Boyle,
who is the Director
and Co-Founder
of the Yale Entrepreneurial
Institute.
YEI, right?
[laughter] Or do
you call it YEE?
I think it's YEI.
A business educational
unit within Yale University
that has the mission
of mentoring students
with new venture ideas.
He received his BS in
Mechanical Engineering
from Manhattan College, his
MS in ME from the University
of Illinois, and his PhD
in Chemical Engineering
from Yale University.
Prior to forming YEI, Dr. Boyle
was previously responsible
within the Office of Cooperative
Research for the licensing
and venture start up of a number
of engineering-based
technologies.
Before joining OCR, he developed
and actively managed the
university's largest corporate
research alliance managing
a large array of both Yale
and external scientist in
bioimaging-based collaborations.
Earlier Dr. Boyle co-founded
and grew a predictive analytics
consulting practice providing
both technical and
pricing guidance
on new product development
to a wide array
of Fortune 1000 companies in the
scientific equipment industry.
He began his entrepreneurial
career while he was still a
graduate student at Yale,
developing novel instruments
for characterizing trace
biomolecules with the support
of the National Institutes
of Health,
and later commercializing these
devices through a wide array
of OEM partnerships as
part of the Yale startup.
Please, join me in welcoming Dr.
Boyle to San Francisco State.
[Applause]
>> Thank you, Dr. Rosser
and thank you Uchi as well
for inviting me here today.
It's my pleasure to be here.
I'm going to tell
you some stories.
Actually, I've got some slides.
I'll get to them
in a few minutes.
But the real reason
why we have any kind
of entrepreneurial instance at
Yale is because six and a half,
almost seven years ago, there
was an article published
in the Wall Street Journal
that embarrassed Yale.
And it was about
Yale students trying
to start ventures
up in New Haven.
And the title of the article was
"The Old Hotspot is
the New Hotspot."
And there're about two groups
of Yale students who tried
to start ventures of in New
Haven while they're still
students and they couldn't find
mentors, or money, or engineers.
Eventually, they found
their way to the Bay Area
to San Francisco, [laughter]
where I stand before you today.
And of course they hit it big,
money, engineers, mentors.
It's just a very go, go
place, as you all know.
This came to the attention
of the senior administration
at Yale.
[laughter] And one of the
vice presidents took the paper
and walked into our
offices, Tech Transfer,
where we're helping
faculties start ventures
and they put the article on
the desk and they said to us,
"We'd like you to
think about us."
They turned around
and walked out.
[laughter] And my
boss, Jon Soderstrom,
who runs Tech Transfer,
he's pretty big guy
in the Tech Transfer world,
he stood up and said to me,
"You know, let me know if
you need any help with that."
And then he stood
up and walked out.
[laughter] So, I'm sitting here
now as a former graduate student
who had played a role
in starting up a company
with my adviser, John Fenn, who
went on to get a Nobel Prize
by the way, and didn't
know what to do about this.
I really felt that day
like I was being punished.
You're asking me to stop working
with faculty and start working
with students like
the 20-year-olds,
the 22-year-olds,
the 24-year-olds?
What are we supposed to do?
We're sure you'll
figure it out this time.
So over the course-- this
was the fall of 2006.
Over the course of a few months,
I went around the northeast,
the US, talked to our partners
on parts of the world and said,
"The only way we can really--
you know, good clinical
trial design dictates
that we have to have
a larger end.
We can't take two examples
in Wall Street Journal
and say there's an
instance there."
So we solicited every single
Yale student that winter
and said, "If you had
an idea for new venture,
we'd like to hear about it."
What we're going to do about
it wasn't exactly clear.
We'd like to hear about them.
And to make it as
challenging as possible,
we went to some undergraduates
and said, "How are we going
to get as broader participation
from the Yale student
body as possible?"
And they said, "This
is something
that students here can
probably identify."
Well, they said, "Really
simple, make it really hard.
Make it really, really hard.
Make the application
absolutely killer to complete."
And we said, "Really?"
And they said, "Yeah."
So transcripts, essays, letters
of recommendation and all
to qualify for a
summer crash course
in starting their new
venture around their idea.
So we said, "If you have an idea
for venture, tell
us what it is."
We got back 52 applications from
students that first year with,
you know, scanned publicity
other than just solicitation,
52 ideas from various students.
And now we had the
challenge of picking some.
Well, we have also the
problem of we need a capital
to give them some
money for the summer,
but we came back to that later.
We have to pick them.
So here's the first
serendipitous moment.
We didn't have enough
background.
As-- You know, as expert as
I am in mass spectometry,
I didn't know about
basically all 52 applications.
So we needed to convene
people who had more expertise
in many different disciplines.
So we got some early stage
investors, Angels, VCs,
entrepreneurs from the New
Haven, Connecticut area
and we said, "Congratulations,
you're on our operating board.
You're a part of the [laughter]
operating board for this group."
And then they turned
to us and said,
"What group is this exactly?"
And we didn't have a name yet.
So I turned to my co-founder
who was a finance guy at Yale.
He was managing what little
money we had at the time.
And I said, "We need a
name, we need a name.
What are we going
to call ourselves?"
And he said, "Why don't
we call it the Yale
Entrepreneurial Institute?"
"Yeah, I like the sound of that.
Let's call it the Yale
Entrepreneurial Institute."
Do you know that if we had
gone through official channels
for that name, it probably
would have taken three years
to get approval?
[laughter] But since it was
just two business guys hacking
around, that was the name.
So we became YEI.
First great moment was when
our boss, Jon Soderstrom
and the VP brought us the
article, Bruce Alexander.
He runs New Haven State Affairs.
New Haven is a very strong
economic development focus.
They gave us the seed capital
to offer grants to students.
And this is the centerpiece of
YEI even now six years later,
is every summer we stop the
ad hoc mentoring of students
and we pick what we think are
the best 10 or 12 or 13 ventures
and we focus all of
our resources on them.
It's a meritocracy.
This is what you do in an
extracurricular environment
when you're trying to
find the best of something
and offer examples to the rest
of the community
of what could work.
It's not everyone
has a great idea
and everyone gets a gold star.
Only a few people
get gold stars.
Only a few people
get the capital.
Only a few people get the
mentors and everyone else
to basically help with
those ideas off the ground.
So that's the essence of the
Summer Fellowship with YEI,
sort of the cornerstone
of what we do.
And every year between 15
and 20 students, 22 students,
become what are called
YEI Fellows.
And every year we've
named those fellows.
And to date, there are over
128 YEI Fellows in the world
and they're special human beings
and they'll always be
special human beings.
It's almost like being
someone from MacKenzie.
You become part of the
alumni crowd of MacKenzie.
That's how we think
of YEI Fellows.
They can still come back
today and ask us questions
and get help and
go to the mentors.
So it's a privileged crowd
and we like to sort of keep
that elitist to demonstrate
to students
that we care about
the best ideas.
But now, underneath that, I had
a meaning with Peter Salovey
who at the time was our provost
and now is our president.
And I was sitting in Peter's
office, I was fortunate enough
to be pulled into a meeting with
Peter from some of the alums
who dragged me in
and we're talking
about support for
entrepreneurship.
And Peter is a Stanford grad
himself and he turns to me
and says-- I'm there thinking,
I'm wheeling and dealing.
I'm going to try and go
from having enough support
for 20 fellows a year
to say 30 or 40 or so.
And Peter turns to me and
says, "How would you--
What would you do to give an
entrepreneurial experience
to 400 or 500 students?"
[Inaudible Remark] My
head nearly exploded off
of my shoulders.
I wasn't thinking
in that context.
But this goes back
to the conversations
that I was having earlier today
with Gabriela and with Marty.
As much as you want to
focus on the best ideas,
if we're really going to be
an entrepreneurial community,
we have to find mechanisms
deeper
down in the pyramid closer
to the base to give larger
and larger numbers of students,
some kind of an experiential--
a way of experiencing
entrepreneurship even
if it's not the killer idea
that deserves Angel capital
and venture capital
and all the rest.
So while we started very
much a part from our faculty,
we really didn't work
at the faculty very much
at all the first years.
Now we're very close partners
with our School of Management,
School of Engineering,
School of Public Health.
We're going to the
Nursing School
for the first time in six years.
So there are a number of--
Forestry is a very
close partner.
So we are trying to build
mechanisms for students
to have some kind
of underpinnings
where they understand more
about what does it
mean to have a venture.
And not every idea really
qualifies as a venture.
Hundreds of times a
year students will come
into us during the academic year
and say, "I got a great idea."
And we'll sit there and
say, "Let's hear it."
And they'll run through the
idea and it's borne of something
in their own experience that
they heard in the dorms,
that they thought about,
whether it's cookie delivery
or whatever, you know.
So something from what I
refer to as the campus ghetto
and they say, "This is a
great, great, great idea."
And I said-- I always say
even myself or my colleagues,
"Why is that a business
and not a club?
What's the diff-- you know,
can you understand the
difference between the two?"
And they'll say, "No."
I say, "Well, if it's a business
and if I give you capital,
you're going to return more
capital than what I gave you."
And so, they'll-- it'll kind
of dawn on them if there needs
to be some kind of model
that goes alongside that.
And here's where, in the course
of the six years, I'm kind of--
I'm really doing a terrible job
of following my slides here.
But I just want to
tell the story.
Many people come
to us with ideas.
There are far more people
in the room who care
about entrepreneurship
than who have ideas.
There are many people
there at Yale who just want
to participate in the
shaping and the implementation
and the delivery of
other people's ideas.
And so we make great use of
that by having students join
on either as co-founders
or as specialists
to help figure out
business models.
Now, we have a business
school at Yale.
That's really helpful because
all those business school
students, they're really good
at putting together
financial models.
The undergraduates, not so much.
The MBA students, much more so.
So by putting those
two groups together,
we usually can get better
plans that really resonate
with early stage investors.
And by the way, I should back up
and say that we're not evaluated
as an academic group,
we're evaluated
as an economic development
group.
We are paid to get
companies started
and dollars raised
and employees hired.
And to date, there have
been 60 some odd companies
who were in the low 60s now.
We're just over 60 million
dollars in investment capital.
We cost the university
between one
and two million dollars
a year ourselves.
Much of that money
comes to us now
through new support from alumni.
So we're not costing
the university.
We're no longer taking
money from some static pot.
We're creating new
wealth from philanthropy,
from alums who care
about entrepreneurship.
They want to see more
of this and that's one
of the things I do while I'm
out here is talking to alumni
about what we're doing.
Development is a
big part of this.
And I think the other part
of the story that I want you
to always remain aware of is
the nexus of student innovation
and business is something that
has rare appeal with alumni.
When-- Gabriela and I were
talking this before, when--
and Sheldon [phonetic]
and I as well.
When faculty go out and
talk about their research,
I really don't sense that
many alums can really identify
with people who are such
deep subject matter experts.
They think of all of you
who've studied this domain
and have big laboratories,
all kinds of experience,
as being in another realm.
When one of your students
goes out and talks
about what they're doing and
if one of your students going
to tell about the
business implications
of what you're doing,
man, that is just like--
that's like feeding
meat to tigers.
The alumni will sit there.
I went out once I was--
[inaudible] talk about like OCR,
Tech Transfer things
with faculty.
If you talk about what
students are doing, invariably,
alumni line up at the end of the
night and they all stand there
to shake your hand and
say, "I wish you had done
that when I was a student.
I really wish."
You've got 'em.
If they say that,
you've got them.
It means that they're
going to become a mentor.
They're going to become
an advisor to the program.
They want to participate
in this.
So I think we're only
in the early days now.
Six years in, we have about
70 or 75-- no, I'm sorry, 80--
up to 80 mentors right now
who are mostly Yale
alums, but not all.
Some are just friends
who are in the--
local business people or people
who like what we're doing,
who served as volunteer mentors
to the-- advisors to the teams.
And every month, they'll
give us four, five,
six hours of their time to spend
with the teams and some end
up spending much more with
the team and actually end
up becoming chairman
of the ventures,
maybe even inventors
of the ventures, too.
And we clone this whole process.
We didn't invent this.
We clone this whole
process from MIT.
That's the running a Venture
Mentoring Service since,
I think about 2000.
So we essentially took the
whole practice from Alec Dingee
and Jerome Smith
who created that
and use it effectively
for ourselves.
So maybe I should tell you, I
call this the grilled cheese--
how a grilled cheese sandwich
transformed Yale ecosystem.
I should really get in to that.
When you're in Tech Transfer,
everything you look out is--
thanks-- when you're Tech
Transfer, everything you look
at is, "Okay, that's a great
idea, can I get a patent
on that, can I protect
that technology, is there--
you know, is it going to
create a defensible mechanism
where we can extract more value
for that than someone else?"
And we went into the--
into student innovation
thinking the same way,
giant, giant mistake.
Student comes to us
in 2008 and said,
"I can make the best grilled
cheese sandwich you've
ever tasted."
And this was his
idea for getting
into the summer fellowship
is going
to make a grilled
cheese sandwich.
And my first thought was, "I
never going to get a patent
on a grilled cheese sandwich.
I don't care how good that
cheese is, the bread, wait,
is there going to be
butter on both sides
or one side or is
it non-obvious?
No, it's all obvious.
This is terrible."
It didn't matter.
It didn't matter.
IP was not the important
characters.
It was service innovation.
It was comfort food.
It was an unexplored category.
There were investors
interested in the space.
There were tight financial.
There was a good margin.
He had a great plan.
And he got a lot of money from
an Angel investor who believed
in his vision and opened the
first store, lines up the door.
Got more money, four
more stores.
And just, it just
spiraled and spiraled.
And it got bigger and
bigger and bigger.
And, you know, in
the old thinking,
in the Tech Transfer thinking
that I had employed
before we met the students,
I wouldn't have even read
the invention disclosure
because there was no
invention disclosure.
Now all of a sudden we're
realizing if you have students
and you have access to
mentors, alumni primarily,
who have the connections in
the real world and have access
to the capital, you
can do things
that you otherwise couldn't do.
So that the grilled cheese
story really became one of the--
I'm going to skip ahead
to that to show you that.
So it's called "Cheeseboy."
He has over a hundred employees.
So we have-- YEI has created
ventures that have some more
like in the neighborhood
of 220 or 240 employees.
Over a hundred employees are
from the grilled
cheese sandwich.
Some of this vision--
information is all dated.
I mean Hadapt and YouRenew
were two other stories I want
to share.
Hadapt, VCs from back
east call me up and say,
"You have to see
this new technology
of Yale computer
science is really hot.
I never heard it before."
And I said, "Okay, I need
to go talk to the chair
and find out who this kid is."
I called this young
faculty member a kid.
This kid is-- The kid was from
MIT, a brilliant scientist,
Daniel Abadi, and, yeah,
technology that I
didn't really understand.
Well, here comes this SOM
student who had six years
as a software engineer at
Draper Labs up in Cambridge
and he understood
what thing was.
And he knew exactly
what he wanted to do
with this technology
for creating ultra large
databases for data mining.
So he comes into the picture,
after few months time,
they decide this is not
only a faculty venture
and a student venture, it's
really a blending of the two.
And so there's a whole arm of
YEI that specializes in faculty
and students working together
to create new ventures
and we call it EEP, Emerging
Entrepreneur Program.
And it's responsible
for a great portion
of all the capital raised
to date, because at the end
of the day investors still like
these tech deals especially
if they make good sense.
He's up to about 35 employees
now, this information,
the data it's not 11, it's 35.
And they've raised about 15
million dollars, not 9.5.
So many of these opportunities--
[inaudible] things that would
not come to these students
through any other mechanism.
So we're putting people
on positions of authority
and were able to prove--
and really prove their--
test their metal and
prove themselves in front
of early stage investors.
So the ecosystem is really
one that if you think
about what Yale, is we have
about 11,000 students
and 4,000 faculty.
You know, one day I
woke up and realized
that our clients
weren't just the faculty,
they were the students, too.
This greatly amplifies the
sort of breath of innovation
that you have access to, if
you can help shape their minds
and give them access to
the right kinds of people.
So I look at Yale sort
of in these four layers.
There's the student body that's
going to school and doing wants
to do and it doesn't really
care about entrepreneurship.
They're focused on, their
academic career and that's fine.
There are others who want
to sort of stick their toe
on the water and have access
to some piece of the curriculum
where you can learn about
business fundamentals.
And we are little thin at
that layer, still at Yale,
in terms of the entrepreneurial
basics.
We need to sort of beef that up.
We have business plan
competitions and other sort
of challenges that helps
students to identify, you know,
what things can work in them.
The top layer, this green layer,
that's where we exist at YEI.
And this is not drawn to scale.
Because if this is drawn to
scale, the green thing would be
so small you couldn't
even see it.
At the end of the day, all of
us care about our institutions
in terms of the prestige
that they enjoy.
And their ability
to recruit faculty
and students help people
have successful careers.
At one point I think we saw
students at Yale as being,
they're there in the chairs
and they're there to learn,
and at some point in
time we transfer them
over to Career Services.
And Career Service's job
is to help them find jobs.
I think this is-- YEI has really
reshaped the dynamic at Yale
where we now see
everyone in the chairs
as potentially having an
idea that's worth exploiting.
And when we have people like
Max Uhlenhuth whose picture here
in the upper right hand corner,
who helped choose
an undergraduate,
computer science student, who
helped create Silvia Terra,
a data mining company
for forestry companies,
it really helps to
reshape students thinking.
Because now, they
don't just think
about I'm coming
to Yale to study.
I'm coming to Yale to try and
do new things and do it in a way
that no other school amongst the
peers will support the same way.
So that's why we're doing YEI
because we're trying to prove
that there're other
models for innovation
that are worth exploring.
And I think given
what I've known now
about San Francisco State and
where you are geographically
in terms of the access, the
resources you have here,
I think you have a fantastic
opportunity to do things here
that even very difficult
to do back in New Haven.
So I applaud you having this
initiative and I look forward
to taking your question later.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Well, thank you
very much Jim.
I really appreciated the grilled
cheese sandwich thing 'cause now
I understand all those
cup cakes stories
which frankly had
been a mystery to me.
How they could do so well, you
know, with their one product.
But I see now that's very
lucrative and perhaps some
of our students could
invest in that.
And so I believe that now we are
going to open up for questions.
And-- [Inaudible
Remark] Okay, first,
we'd like to have the
students introduce themselves.
Would you please start?
>> I'm sorry.
My name is Morgan Hanssler.
I'm a senior electrical engineer
here at San Francisco State
and I have a couple of
questions for you guys.
>> Are we questions right now?
Is that?
>> Yeah, so introduce your name.
>> Maybe introduce
>> Okay.
>> Maybe introduce first and
then the questions, okay?
If the, next gentlemen
would come up please.
>> My name is Nick
Sanger [phonetic].
I just finished my BS
in Biochemistry here
at San Francisco State.
I'm going to be starting
a PhD program in the fall.
>> Also mention your Beckman.
>> Oh, and I'm also
a Beckman scholar.
>> Susan Calhoun, I'm a
senior BS in Biochemistry
and I'm also a Beckman scholar.
>> Hi! I'm Gina Bowler
[phonetic].
I'm a junior and a
biochemistry major
and I'm also a Beckman scholar.
>> I'm Commodore Saint
Germain [phonetic].
I'm in the MARC program,
biochemistry major.
I think that's it.
>> Okay, great.
So the students maybe should
ask some of the first question
and then we'll open
to the audience.
So I believe that you had
a question you were wanting
to ask.
Please.
>> Yeah, I have.
>> Maybe the microphone if
you can come forward again.
>> Thank you.
>> Those of you who are panic
about losing lunch Jaylon
[phonetic] has promised me
that there will be
lunches for us.
So if that's why you're
leaving please don't.
[ Laughter ]
>> So my first question
was for the CASPiE Program.
I was wondering how the
students were selected.
I know that from personal
experience, being selected for--
by any sort of faculty is always
encouraged me to work harder
and to feel better about
the work that I'm doing.
And so that is kind
of interesting to me.
>> So one of the goals of
CASPiE was to give access
to all students to
scientific research.
So we did not want
this to be the domain.
They know students who really
were already very successful
and probably our students who
are going to succeed regardless
of what kinds of experiences
we provide they'll--
it was also open
to those students.
So we really wanted to
capture the students
who really didn't
realized that they had it
in them to be scientist.
Because they have never
had that experience,
nobody has ever made
them think about it
or they might have
misconceptions
about scientific research is.
So from that perspective,
we really wanted
to make it a process where-- to
as greater degree as possible,
all of the students
could participate.
Now, I mentioned that we
started with five institutions.
That grew to 17.
Each of those institutions,
and of those 17,
9 of them were two-year
colleges.
The others were four-year
research institutions.
Each of those institutions
had their own way of deciding
who is part of the experience.
But that usually was either--
everybody who's in the course
does it, or it's announced
to the students
that a particular section
would be run this way
and students get
to register for it.
That's where they often came.
But there was never an
application process per se.
So, it was really, either
students got to select into it,
or you just happen to be
assigned to those courses.
>> Does another student have a
question you you'd like to ask?
>> My question was also
about the CASPiE program.
You mentioned that students--
you were having students
control instruments remotely.
I was just wondering kind of
about the specifics of that.
Since there'd be sometime where
they have put their sample
into the machine is do
you have supervisors
who will take their samples
from the lab and put them
into the instrument, and
then they analyze it at home
from their computers, or
do you have to have time
for the students to come
in and load their samples?
>> So, we wanted the lab
to run as much as possible
in a remote mode, so students
in Oregon wouldn't have to drive
to Purdue put their samples in.
[laughter] Not be-- Wouldn't
really meet goals there.
So, what we did was
we picked instruments
that would have auto-sampler
types of capabilities,
and many of those
auto-sampler capabilities come
with specific types of
trays or ways that you--
you know, you can load a
large number of samples
and then just ship
that tray to us.
And so, the students-- the
institutions who were involved
in doing this, we gave
them instructions on how
to order the particular
tray or we'd send it
to them depending
on the situation.
And the students
at the institution
would load their samples
into the appropriate types
of sample holders or vials.
Put them in the auto-sampler
trays.
That would get shipped to
the location when it gets
to the instrument location.
Then the technician there would
load them into the instrument.
But the students at the school
have already created a file
that lists what sample
is it, what position.
And so, all the person,
the technician has
to do is really just put it
physically into the instrument.
And from there, the students
can run it using the files
that they've created.
And the other thing about
this instrument network--
so, most of the instruments
are physically at Purdue,
but some of them are actually
at other institutions.
So, it turns out
that the architecture
that underlies this makes it
so that you can have
really an instrument,
wherever that instrument
happens to reside.
And, to the operator
on then other side,
there's no difference.
You're just connecting up to
the same software essentially,
and it's just a matter of
where you ship the samples.
>> Thank you.
>> Well, since we know from Jim
that the most effective
interactions where faculty
and students, let's turn to
this side of the audience.
There's a faculty member
who have a question.
Yes, Barbara?
>> I've been thinking a lot
in this university is
thinking a lot about education
and how education is delivered.
And, our governor
has took course,
his proposal for
online eduction.
And it seems like a lot
of the things you guys are
talking about, this innovation
through creativity,
peer-to-peer discussion,
peer-to-student discussion,
mentor-to-student discussion,
and I wonder if it can be
transformed in some way
to an online environment, or is
that person-to-person contact
that lab, touching, feeling
interaction are really critical
to what you have.
>> I'll take that.
The-- Our experiences at
YEI, we've never invested
in an online learning tool.
We thought about it a
couple of different times.
You know, is there some ways
to sort of educate the masses
with having something that's--
you know, where we get more
leverage from the internet.
And we've never taken that step.
Now, two of the first students
who graduated from YEI went
on to start something
in New York City
called General Assembly.
And General Assembly is
probably the biggest--
they call it an Urban
Campus for Entrepreneurship.
It's down near Union Square.
They have a whole raft of course
they offered during the year,
web dev immersive,
business development,
fundamental, et cetera.
A number of them are in person
on their campus in
their building.
But a number of new
ones are now online.
So they're mixing.
They're creating a
mix of resources.
Some that are remote and
some that are in person.
I think to do with all
remote, is a tremendous risk
because of the dynamic that
occurs when you are in a room
with multiple people, and
ideas are being shared
and bounced and shaped.
But I think you can deliver
some of that technology--
some of that information online.
And I think GA has sort of--
at least on our side of
the country, GA has serve
like the standard bearer
right now in term of that mix.
>> Darlene, did you
have question?
>> Yes, thank you
Provost Rosser.
I like to thank the three of
you for your presentations.
They provide a lot of
incentive and motivation,
not only to our students
but to faculty.
And you've all spoken to how
you can stretch traditional
education with what we call
[inaudible] maybe internship,
field work or applications
in the community.
My question though is
directed to Dr. Boyle.
And that is when you have these
entrepreneurial apprenticeships
with your students, what happens
to the intellectual property
rights within the university?
>> That's a great question.
We specifically design this
so that students have their own
ideas, they own their ideas.
Just because you're dealing with
the, you know, the IP police
so to speak, you know,
the Tech Transfer office,
we're not laying claims to
things that they create.
Now there is-- every
university, ours,
yours have policies around.
What happens if students
give rise
to things in your laboratories?
And those policies
are going to dictate.
You know, if they do something
that uses your equipment,
then the university has right
to claim that invention,
whether it chooses to
exercise that right,
is really up to your leadership.
At Yale, right now, we're
taking a hands-off approach.
We're saying, if kids create
new and interesting things,
let's see where they go with it,
let's see what kind
of value they create.
We're not trying to
stifle innovation by coming
in and saying it's ours.
If it comes out of
your laboratory,
and you invested
millions of dollars in it,
and the student place some
role in getting that out,
then the student
might be a co-founder,
but we're still going to have
a license to that technology.
And that's part of the beauty in
having groups like ours attached
or really a part of our
Tech Transfer groups,
because they control
all the licensing terms.
And we can go to them and
cleave for as fair behavior,
as fair set of terms as possible
because, you know, we're trying
to get-- not just faculty
but students off
the ground now, too.
So, it's an intelligent
conversation,
and every case is a
little bit different.
>> Collin, did you
have a question?
>> I'm from [inaudible],
so I have a lot of affinity
with the grilled cheese.
[laughter] But I had
a question for Martin.
Do you think the [inaudible]
concept which is so impressive,
do you think that's transferable
to many other departments?
>> Yeah, thank you
for that question.
Yeah, transferable.
I was asked this in
Seoul, Korea, how you kind
of scale it up, and you
both mentioned that a bit.
And I think that's a
challenge for all of us.
And my first response was, well,
I think the first thing
you need is a champion.
So in other departments
or in other universities,
I think that's the first things
you need, somebody who believes
in this, somebody who's
going to invest in it,
you need a department that's
going to support that, a dean,
even the academic institution in
some way has at least say, "Hey,
this is good, we think
this is something important
for you to do."
And this could even get credit
for your tenure promotion
as well in whatever
category that might be.
I do believe it's
something that could
because cross-disciplinary.
Obviously, there're models in
this room that could be applied,
there're models out there.
But absolutely, one of the
ways I see scaling up iDo is
like what I'm doing in Seoul
right now is where we looked
to fund a professor then we
deliver to that professor.
Basically, the tools and the
curriculum and the experiences
that we've built here to
get them up and going,
build hopefully a
three-year, you know,
opportunity for them
to sustain it.
And then within that three-year,
they find opportunity to fund it
and sustain it as well.
But-- yeah, I hope that
answers that question.
>> Did the student have a
question you wanted to ask?
>> So, the high school program
that you have, is it a class
that high school seek or is it
volunteer based where they want
to do something creative
and they know they
can come there for it?
>> Good question.
We're given the students.
We take everybody.
Students, many of
them are challenged.
A lot of the students have
not had people in their lives
that have been there
consistently for them,
even in the schools, principals
and teachers come and go.
Again, we don't know
year-to-year,
even semester-to-semester.
We are trying to build
now a two-year pathway.
At Thurgood Marshall that
focuses on the iDo program
where that we would then be
marking in it to middle schools,
and parents and students
would see this there,
and it would become
a destination campus.
But that's in our next
five-year plan to build to that.
I will say this though.
I think the success of
what we've done is that,
it is not screened in any way.
They discover it while they're
in school, or they discover it
when they end up in our class.
And I think all of them,
you know, gain from that.
But I think it's just, you know,
a discovery process for them.
Thank you.
>> First, the gentlemen
at the back.
I'm sorry.
I don't know your name.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> You know, up until
about two years ago,
the answer to that question,
quite honestly, would
have been no.
We've-- For purposes of having
a common vernacular with this,
all the students and all the
faculty, we've began to follow
as a didacting tool
the book called
"Business Model Generation".
So we use Business Model canvas
as sort of the shorthand,
and all of the aspects
of the canvas talk
about value proposition,
channels.
So everyone basically is now
using the same set of tools,
if you will, to describe what
the venture opportunities are.
We're not there.
Some years ago, I thought
we were going to go in
and teach Technology
Ventures by Byers and Dorf.
And the kids took one look
at the textbook, and they--
and some of them said,
"It looks boring."
Someone said, "It looks dense."
And so, we sort of waffled
and we never adapted
any formal textbook
to teach students
the underpinnings,
until BMG came along,
Business Model Generation,
because it's more
been vignette driven.
It's shorter.
It's great for people who have
attention deficit disorder.
I'm sorry guys.
You all have attention
deficit disorder.
I think we are-- we're
all getting it too.
So-- And it teaches
in smaller bite size--
in smaller bite size
pieces the concepts
that you need them
to understand.
So that's the premise we
looked at any idea coming
out of a classroom, or the dorm
or anywhere else is, you know,
this is really-- meet the test
to being a viable venture.
>> This is quick
follow up on that.
So is this in a class have
this textbook is prescribed?
>> No. It's the workshops
that we offer at YEI.
It's extracurricular.
>> Denise?
>> I also have question for Jim.
I plant-- I teach in
College of Business.
So, every year or every
semester, I plant a seed
in my students because
they're graduating.
And, I say, "You know, that
speaker we had last week
or doing that event, we
have [inaudible] speakers
that came in,
I'm going to tap your shoulder
in a couple of years as an alum
to come back and
do the same thing."
It makes them feel good
'cause they have the speaker
and then they think, "Ooh,
I could be in that role."
Do you have any information from
your experience as to how far
out you need to be re-tapping
those shoulders of those alum?
>> That's a great question.
>> Three years, five years?
>> Yeah, we started bringing
fellows, graduated fellows back
to talk to the new fellows,
probably in only the
third or fourth year.
They had enough experiences
that they could share.
And quite honestly, the
message that a 25-year-old,
or a 28-year-old can
give to a 20-year-old,
land with a lot more impact
than someone with gray hair.
[Laughter]
>> So, thanks for that.
[laughter] But Connie [laughter]
since yours is gray
too, no problem.
>> Exactly, exactly.
>> Not quite as gray
as mine, but Connie?
>> My question gets back to the
topic and then they can create
and I think you all did a very
brilliant job of expressing ways
that you are creative, that
your students are creative.
And my question on
that goes back to some
of the ideas of upgrading that.
And having your students
as a group coming
up with whether it's a
scientific or a business
or an artistic, it's
the right one.
It's the one we're
going to pick.
It's the one that's
going to be funded.
And when it's about
something like creativity
which could be somewhat
nebulous, how do you [inaudible]
that challenge, or
give us some help?
>> Just real quick.
With the iDo program,
my university students
develop rubrics, whether it's
on their own projects
or whether it's
within the organization
projects.
So we do develop these
rubrics to guide us.
Those rubrics are
being used today,
where we're delivering
some kind of an assessment
of the student weekly.
But, you know, they're
pretty general.
They're not, you know,
based on some test
or something like that.
It's motivation.
It's growth.
It's the evolutionary process.
Have you-- You know, have you
moved on from you started.
So-- But we do that.
And then on the university
level, I'll tell you this.
I think the first three
weeks of a class, a minor,
the key one if you can get it.
Through there you
could probably going
to do pretty well in the class.
And with that said, I spend
very little time on grading.
My whole thing is being in the
moment, being in the class,
providing the student the
tools, the information,
whatever it needs to be
to make them successful.
So, when you look at the things
I've done at this university,
the thing I haven't done
a lot is spending a lot
of time on grading.
>> I'll throw in my
piece on that as well.
With the CASPiE modules, we
did need to come up with a way
to provide a grade,
since this is part
of their science lab course.
And so, we created also a rubric
that goes along with the--
with a generic CASPiE
module approach.
And, the rubric-- the CASPiE
modules have an initial part
that is very guided.
In other words, we
teach them how
to do a particular
type of technique.
And then, the last half
of it is very open-ended
where the students design
their own research experiment,
figure out how to collect
to data, collect the data,
figure out what the data mean,
and then make some sense of it.
And so, the rubrics
for that second part
which is the research experience
have aspects of it which look
at student's logical
thinking with respect
to how will they collect
data to answer a question,
whether the data are
actually connected
to the question they want to
answer, how they use the data.
If the data are not what they
expect, what they do about that?
So, it doesn't say, well,
the data aren't what you
expect, then it's wrong.
But rather, what
you do about that,
how you adjust your experimental
procedure based on information
from data you've collected
which is part of that cycle.
And then, how you make a
claim, a scientific claim based
on the evidence or data
that you've collected.
So it's really looking at
those key process pieces
to doing scientific research.
It means that the
grading is actually--
does require a little bit more
time from those who are grading,
but it looks at the
process rather
than at the actual answers
that the students gave.
>> Other questions?
Yeah, Lily.
>> [Inaudible] so you
mentioned the student generate--
that they have generate by
those students taking the course
belong to the instructor.
So could the instructor
publish those data?
Do they need to recognize those
students of their [inaudible]?
And the reason I asked is I
remember my first graduate
student, I was [inaudible]
and they came
to San Francisco
for [inaudible]?
And he ran-- he ran the lab, he
have student do all his research
and it was beautiful result.
But I never feel
quite comfortable
to publish those data.
So, the question for you is,
how do we justify
student's [inaudible] papers?
>> So, there are other
models out there,
examples of courses
being used as part
of an authentic research
experience
that ends up being published.
And, in many of those cases,
you will find a publication
that includes a large number
of names of the students
who participated and actually
contributed to that work.
Now, with CASPiE, because of the
nature of the amount of time,
if you add it all up, really,
it's about 20 to 24 hours
in the lab that students
actually spend
that would contribute
to this research.
So in some cases, their
contribution is something
that the researcher would
use to make a decision
about the next step in the
research rather than end up with
that data as something that
goes into the publication.
But in other cases, the data may
actually go into a publication.
And if that happens, and
that is published then, yes,
those students who contributed
data do get acknowledged.
And we have had publications
come out in
which that was the case.
In other situations, the work
of those students have
really been sort of formative
with respect to the
direction of the research.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
Yeah. And that, if it was-- they
actually would part of that.
>> Rick?
>> Rick Harvey, Health
Education.
I was curious about
the initiation
of the programs [inaudible]
of the cases.
For example, in Boyle's
situation,
when you first started about,
how much was the budget
for funding those
students, and then--
and you mentioned of
self-sustaining [inaudible]?
[ Inaudible Remark ]
>> That's a great question.
We started it with five people
when we're delivering the
program just seven sessions a
semester, one semester a year.
Now, it's been built up where
we're delivering it five days a
week to one class for 44 weeks.
And we're building to
a two-year program.
So it started small, but
incrementally has grown
which forces me try to seek
more and more funding for that
as well because-- so the
students or volunteers
or they do it for
independent supervised credit,
there's equipment,
there is materials,
I have to get a release
time as well,
which is actually
relatively new me getting it.
I didn't do that for a while,
but that's created a context
for it to expand
within, you know,
multiple week semester
scenarios.
So I just have to get out
there to do more funding.
Most of the funding I received
are primarily from four friends
that were successful
financially.
And then, you know,
I get, you know,
a variety of 1,000 dollar
checks, one was waiting
for me this morning from
a professor in Seoul
that was just moved
by the work we do.
Once I got it from a
guy in an airplane,
another 1,000 dollar
check just talking to him.
But, yeah, that's-- and I have
to probably double the amount
of money we bring in
'cause we're developing a
two-year program.
>> Were you sitting
in the first class--
>> That must be some
elevator speech.
[laughter] We're going to
be all checking with you
for your elevator speech there,
Marty, or your airplane speech.
I mean, wow.
[Multiple Speakers]
>> That was great.
>> A pretty good one, center of
development office down there.
Jerry, yeah.
>> Dr. Boyle, I noticed on your
slides that one of the companies
that were started was that a
recyclable computer company.
And it appears that a social
enterprise at some sense.
It has both of the business
sustainability [inaudible]
but also has a good--
[inaudible] good.
And I wondered if you are
using any kinds of measures
on the proposals you ask on
their social [inaudible],
where it ranges in social
and commercial [inaudible]?
>> [Inaudible] disclosure,
Jerry and I were talking
before about social venture.
So it's a little bit of a--
we kind of set this
question up, he and I.
We don't-- YEI, we don't
yet have a formal mechanism
for really evaluating
social ventures the way
that we probably should.
When people come to us and
say they're going to try
and create something
other than wealth,
we don't have the right
boards, the right, you know,
set of investors for looking
the non-financial outcomes
and really weighing in on, A,
whether that's really important;
and B, whether that
can really occur.
So we're-- And one of the
reasons I was so eager
to come here today
was to be part
of a conversation this
afternoon on social ventures,
because in some ways, starting
social ventures is harder.
It's harder than for profit
ventures, because you still have
to have a business model by
which you're going to create it
at least as much wealth
to keep the venture going.
And so you can't just, you
know, knee-jerk and give support
to every single student or
faculty member who says,
"Wind turbans in East Africa or
healthcare for the underserved
in New Haven or whatever it is."
Because first of all, we don't
have any way of evaluating that,
how likely it is
that is to occur.
And how do you compare to
such different outcomes, too.
So we're still struggling
with that as an institution,
trying to figure out if
the business side is going
to weigh in.
Not the academics.
That's not part of a class.
This is part of-- we're going
to try and put grant capital up
and I'll get something to go.
How do we evaluate that?
So we're still struggling for
our rubric right now, too.
>> You know, you make
a really good point.
I'm going to chime in with that.
I just got back from an
international conference
on social innovation.
That's where I think we all
have to be, can I say skeptical
about the things we do and
the impact it has in society.
A lot of the things that I've
learned over my lifetime is
that very few are the
things that we intend to do
that we do-do with very good
meaning really have the positive
impact that we had hope
they would have had.
And then once it's
implemented it's very difficult
to pull back on that.
So the whole idea of social
innovation is very exciting.
On the other hand, I'm
very nervous by it as well.
And we just have to
have really good minds,
sitting at the table, analyze
these things, implement them
in stage gates, assess it before
you fully embrace whatever
endeavor you're involved in.
And again, if it's really not
doing what you want to do,
pull back and try
something else.
So, yeah, that's
very tricky stuff.
>> Yeah, Laura.
>> This was really
connected to the question
that I was thinking about.
But I was wondering if you
have any social ethical
and legal implications,
curricular or topics
at least built in so
that perhaps the ideas
that are coming can
consider what or the LC,
the ethical social implications
and to start thinking
about how to address them.
So perhaps marrying-- I don't
know if that's the right word--
but social entrepreneur
and an economic entrepreneur
matrix may not be the right
time yet.
That is an [inaudible]
for which to get there.
If you have any thoughts
on that?
>> Just that-- I think in
terms of the discussion around,
the kinds of outcomes that--
the various Yale schools would
like to see occur,
the Yale Law School,
Yale School of Public
Health, Yale Medical School,
Yale School Forestry,
and School of Management,
all of have strong interest
in social ventures
or social enterprise.
So they have practices
academically that address
for what they think
are the big issues.
But for the business layer,
where we have to figure
out where we're going to deploy
capital and put mentors in place
to try and get things to
go, that's tricky business.
You know, this is
not net impact.
This is not a meeting
where we sit around and--
you know, and think about
what the world could do.
We're putting money out to
try and get things to occur.
And we have great stats
on the for-profit side.
We don't want to screw it
up by doing something silly
on the social venture
side that doesn't work.
So I'm coming to you to learn
as much as anything else
because we don't
know how to do it.
>> Yes, you had a question?
>> I had a question for the--
about the CASPiE program.
I know 18 to 24 hours
of research is hard
to get anything done
within that short time.
So most of the benefits come
from the peer discussions
and like have-- like--
>> To students you mean?
>> Yes. 'Cause I know
you guys have discussions
about the stuff they've done
previously and before, like,
how long are those sessions
and have you guys tried that in
like just regular lab
classes with just adding
on the peer discussions
to see if that helps?
>> So, the 18 to 24 hours is
the amount of time if you have,
you know, 6 to 8
weeks, 3 hours a week.
That's the amount of time the
students are spending physically
in the lab doing things.
But the great thing is that
they can spend as much time
as they might between those
sessions thinking, right,
the thinking and planning
and getting together and some
of that time going
to these workshops.
And I think that that's a
lot of where the value comes
in for the student that when
they leave the lab one week,
they're still thinking
about that experience
and they come back and get to
work on it again and they get
to think about it in between
as opposed to you turn
in your worksheet
at the end of lab
and you don't do
anything more with that.
So that slow processing of the
information and applying it
and thinking about where to
take it next is a great deal
of the value for the student,
even though the individual,
you know, the total number
of hours themselves may
not add up to a lot.
The workshops with the
peer leaders are one
to two hours a week.
And the students, I
think, do get a lot
of the value out of that.
The peer-led team
learning model has been--
it originated with
lecture courses.
And so it has been applied
as just adding those
to existing courses.
And there's a great deal of
benefit to the students there.
So, when we decided to
change this approach
to teaching the laboratory,
we wanted the students
to have additional support
and we decided to go
with this PLTL model for that.
Since I have the microphone
I did want to add something
to Richard's question
about how to sustain it.
With respect to CASPiE there's
a little different dynamic
going on.
The funding that we
originally received from NSF
to do the chemistry
part was really
to help us develop the
model, the approach
and to work originally with the
first group of scientist and set
up the evaluation
and those sorts
of things and do the piloting.
But we created the CASPiE
model to be something
that would essentially
be dropped right
into the laboratory
course, right.
You don't have to change the
structure of the schedule.
You don't have to
have special equipment
because that's on the other end.
And so once we created that
model, all of those institutions
who have picked it
up, it's just part
of how they're teaching
those courses.
And I wanted to get that in
while there are administrators
in the room.
Because it doesn't-- you know,
we've sort of done our part
and now that those faculty
who have come to our workshops
and decided to do CASPiE, they
are just doing that as part
of the expenses that
they would normally spend
on teaching those
laboratory courses and working
with the faculty on their
campus who have a research idea
that they can bring to that.
>> Great. We'll take
maybe one more question
if there is one before
we close the formal part.
Yes ,Mark?
[Inaudible Remark] Oh, okay.
[Inaudible Remark]
Yeah, and then we go.
>> This question
is for Dr. Boyle.
I was wondering if-- you know,
you mentioned in your talk
that you were somewhat
surprised by the idea
of the grilled cheese
sandwich shop
and thought it would
be difficult to patent,
maybe difficult to get started.
But do you find actually
that more
of the successful ventures are
less intellectually ambitious
because they're easier
to get off the ground?
>> Yeah. Yeah.
Well, they go faster
to your point, Nick.
The one venture that was--
up on the board briefly
called "YouRenew",
it become our first
venture to be acquired just
in the last few months.
So we have actually had one
full cycle completed now
and it was the students who
came to us with the idea
of doing recycling of cellphones
and PDAs and laptops, et cetera.
Their first idea, their very
first idea when they came
to us was they want to do--
they want to do a
vitamin water knockoff.
And when we looked at all the
economics of doing vitamin water
and sliding cost and fees and
bottling and distribution,
it just seemed too hard and
the space was too complicated.
And they weren't going
to compete against Pepsi.
So they went away.
They came back a month later
and they said, "We're going
to recycle used cellphones."
I mean, how does--
how could a 30 or a 40
or a 50-year-old
person whose plasticity
in their brain have long
since disappeared come
in with something that
was so discontinuous
with that first concept.
[laughter] This is part
of the beauty of working
with young people is
everything is fair game.
So to your point, service
innovation is actually something
that we do encourage students
to look at very seriously.
Obviously, if there's
something in the laboratory
into which millions
of dollars have gone
from the federal government
in terms of research,
there's a real asset
there that we ought
to try and capitalize on.
But at many times, students
can see inefficiencies
in the market place that
we can't see ourselves.
And with a fairly small
amount of capital,
50 or 100,000 dollars, they
can prove that out and make
that a real investable
hypothesis for investors.
>> Thank you.
Well, please join me in
formally thanking our panel.
[ Applause ]