All of the students, faculty, and staff who participated in the immersion program.
Students from India, Thailand, China, Japan, and Guyana just visited UMass Lowell to take part in a two-week immersion experience with UMass Lowell students, faculty, staff, and even some of our DifferenceMaker teams. The students took part in an accelerated course called Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation within the Manning School of Business taught by Ashwin Mehta and Deborah Finch
The immersion experience focused on innovation and entrepreneurship, which fits right in with DifferenceMaker’s goal of helping students think innovatively in everyday life. Holly Butler, the director of the DifferenceMaker program, led a two-hour session on innovation and creativity last Thursday, June 18th. She spent time lecturing on the definition of each topic and differentiating the two.
A team, including a DifferenceMaker winning team (Playable Therapy), preparing their car model.
Afterward, the students spent about 45 minutes building a model of a car that could withstand a hypothetical situation of dirt roads and rough travel in order to bring residents of a rural town to a hospital far away. The students were given tinker toys and had to find team members with other tinker toys in order to create an innovative vehicle.
After teams made a model of the innovative vehicle with the tinker toys, they were asked to explain their vehicle in front of the class and test it by rolling it down a steep board of wood meant to mimic the rough terrain. The teams succeeded in matching their creativity and innovative skills to make functional and unique vehicles that all passed the test!
You can check out videos of the teams’ innovative cars by clicking here!
Holly, Director of the DifferenceMaker program, with some of the international students.