By Josh Siatkowski | Staff Writer
Five months after a team of sophomores formed the first cohort of University Innovation Fellows at Baylor, the organization is bringing in a new class of freshmen to ensure continuity of the group and its impacts.
San Antonio freshman Abbie Green, McGregor freshman Chloe McCauley, The Woodlands freshman Alan San Miguel and Anaheim, Calif., freshman Naina Uppal make up the new class. The four were accepted in early April.
University Innovation Fellows is a global program that empowers students to make changes on their campuses, like hosting workshops, creating new student spaces, or in the case of Baylor UIF, eliminating food waste from dining halls. Started in 2012 at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, the program now extends to over 300 institutions around the world.
Alongside promoting creative, collaborative and entrepreneurial solutions to campus challenges, UIF is also devoted to longevity and lasting impact. For the founders of Baylor UIF — Littleton, Colo., sophomore Ethan Friend; Austin sophomore Warren Huang; Lubbock sophomore Carter Lewis; and Westport, Conn., sophomore Spencer Yim — that meant admitting a new cohort to ensure UIF remains active at Baylor for years after the four sophomores have graduated.
“One of the things that is really good … with the new cohort is that continuity aspect,” Yim said. “We’re excited that [UIF] will stay at Baylor, and we’re excited to see where that may take them in the future.”
For Green, the ability to grow the program into a long-lasting and impactful organization at Baylor was an important reason why she decided to apply as a freshman.
“The part that was exciting about UIF was the continuity, the part that it grows with me,” Green said.
And while all four members of the new cohort are united in their commitment to making long-lasting improvements to campus, they’ll be tackling these challenges from different angles. Green and San Miguel are in the business school, while Uppal is a neuroscience major and McCauley is an apparel design major.
Lewis, one of the sophomore fellows, said this diversity was both something they wanted to see and that it represents their new cohort very well.
“We wanted people who would be ambitious and think big, and not limit themselves on project ideas,” Lewis said.
San Miguel, Green and Uppal have already started considering projects to implement, ranging from granting easier access to period products, building relationships with Baylor staff and preserving water on campus.
However, the freshmen won’t be implementing these projects quite yet, as they are still in the training phase. While the sophomore fellows spend this semester continuing to work on their food waste project, the freshmen will largely be working on their applications to officially be accepted into the program by Stanford University next fall.
“In regards to the food waste project, that’s something that [the sophomores] are handling right now,” Huang said. “We want [the freshmen] to focus on their application. But we envision in the future, once they’re accepted as fellows, to jump in on these projects with us as much as we will jump in on projects with them so that we can start doing multiple projects across campus.”
The freshmen can also look forward to a conference at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, which all new fellows from around the world have the opportunity to attend. The founding sophomores returned from this trip on April 6 and hope to see their freshmen cohort making the same trip this time next year.
“It was a really exciting trip,” Friend, a member of the sophomore cohort, said. “I think the greatest takeaway was getting the whole global networking aspect of the trip, getting to speak with individuals from all around the globe … I think the United States was actually a minority represented at that conference.”
Friend said he and Lewis were also able to present their progress on their food waste project in front of 130 fellows.
As the freshman cohort continues work on their applications for next fall, members of Baylor UIF look forward to continuing their work, and hope to have many more completed projects and presentations in the future.
