Innovate@BU announced Friday the 12 members of its Student Leadership Council, created to guide and foster the initiative’s ongoing development.
The three main goals of the Student Leadership Council are to provide constructive feedback, reach new audiences and create new programming, said Rachel Spekman, Innovate@BU’s program director of business ventures.
The idea behind the Student Leadership Council was to amplify students’ voices, Spekman said, as Innovate@BU is a student-focused initiative.
“This is one of our attempts to put students first and have their ideas be fully fleshed out in a way that feels like they are promoting Innovate@BU and their ideas are being heard and moving forward,” she said.
Spekman said the application process for the first student leadership council sought individuals highly involved in BU’s community.
Part of the application process was a group interview at the beginning of October, said Sydney Gullett, a student leader and junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, where candidates discussed why they wanted to be on the council and what innovation means to them.
Gullett said she wanted to join the council to “empower more students of color and marginalized groups to become involved in innovation.”
Pablo Ferreyra, another member of the Student Leadership Council, said he applied because of the high regard he holds for Innovate@BU, which helped him launch his own business venture, Verto.
The student leadership council’s primary goal this fall is to grow the initiative, Spekman said. Each student leader will be trained in the Innovate@BU pitch at their next meeting in November, she said, which they will then present to two clubs, classes or associations.
Another requirement for student leaders in the fall semester is to attend two Innovate@BU events and provide feedback, Spekman said.
“The fall is sort of who are we, what we do, and how can we get better,” Spekman said. “And then the spring is when we can take some of that and actually apply it to events.”
Spekman said she hopes the Student Leadership Council will help improve Innovate@BU’s signature programs and provide programming ideas for its primary events in the spring, the innovation-focused IDEA Conference and Innovation Week, a collection of 30 events held by different university partners.
For the fall semester, Gullett said student leaders will focus on increasing community engagement with the BUild Lab.
“I think since the BUild Lab is so new, one of our goals is just getting the word out there and getting more traffic inside the BUild Lab itself,” Gullett said.
CAS freshman Sushane Sharma said he was excited to hear about the BUild Lab and the opportunities it provides to all BU students.
“Once I get the chance I will definitely look into it and explore it,” he said. “And [..] it should be available to all students, and all students should take advantage of this opportunity to learn more about the innovation that’s occurring here at BU.”
Student leaders cover many different fields of study, Ferreyra said, and will aim to bring students from those fields to the BUild Lab.
“We’re trying to get more students from more majors and from different background to join parts of the BUild Lab to foster a more culturally diverse and more majorly diverse environment for innovation,” Ferreyra said. “That’s something that the BUild Lab prioritizes. That’s why they brought us in.”
Alejandro Ruiz, a senior in the Questrom School of Business, said he thinks such a combination of diversity and innovation can help students produce great ideas.
“I truly believe innovation is a very, very strong tendency and trend that we need to address,” Ruiz said, “and by having people with different backgrounds, with different mentalities, with different skills, great ideas can come from breaks like this.”
Each student leader has chosen a specific initiative about which to hold an event in the spring semester, Ferreyra said.
Ferreyra, a senior in the College of Engineering, said he has chosen to focus on bringing more engineers to the BUild Lab. Many engineering students don’t have the opportunity to apply the things they learn in class in their first few years at BU, Ferreyra said, while many BUild Lab teams don’t have enough engineers.
“My role is to bridge this gap between the teams that don’t have the engineering talent and the College of Engineering, which has this excess of it and students just don’t know what to do,” Ferreyra said.
Other student leaders are focusing on topics including public health and helping the prison population, Ferreyra said.
Gullet said the Student Leadership Council’s ultimate goal is to empower students to share and start work on their ideas at the BUild Lab.
“I think our primary goal for Innovate@BU and the student leadership council itself is to promote a more innovative ecosystem on campus, and to empower students to become involved in Innovate@BU so that they can get their individual ideas out there,” Gullet said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Sharma’s gender. An updated version of this article reflects this correction.
