Twelve Morgan State Students Named As University Innovation Fellows

Twelve Morgan students recently completed training to become University Innovation Fellows, participants in a global, interdisciplinary leadership development initiative managed by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). The University Innovation Fellows program seeks to empower student leaders to increase innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity and design thinking on their campuses. The Morgan undergraduates were among 169 students from 49 higher education institutions in four countries named as Fellows in the program’s Fall 2016 session. Morgan President David Wilson, Dean Fikru Boghossian of Morgan’s School of Business and Management and Eugene DeLoatch, former dean of Morgan’s School of Engineering, acknowledged the new inductees during a pinning ceremony held at The Business Center, home of Morgan’s Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management.

University Innovation Fellows are provided with tools to learn how to analyze their campus communities for new opportunities to bring about beneficial change, assess the needs of their school’s stakeholders, collaborate with peers from diverse disciplines and then find solutions to existing problems. Morgan’s most recent cohort of Fellows completed the six-week training in four-member support groups called “Leadership Circles.” Among their upcoming activities is a “Silicon Valley Meetup,” where Fellows will take part in immersive experiences at the d.school, Google and other Silicon Valley organizations, in March 2017.

Mary K. Foster, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Morgan’s Earl G. Graves School of Business and Management, serves as the group’s faculty sponsor.

The new Fellows are:

Leadership Circle S16-1

• Saxfield Chatmon, Electrical Engineering, Junior
• Ashley Gray, Multimedia Journalism, Sophomore
• Jordan Joines, Electrical Engineering, Junior
• Sheena Williams, Business Administration, Sophomore

Leadership Circle S16-3

• Ayodeji Afolabi, Electrical Engineering, Junior
• Karran Costley, Electrical Engineering, Junior
• Taylor Griffin, Marketing, Junior
• Avian Richardson, Industrial Engineering, Junior

Leadership Circle S16-5

• Kendell Costley, Electrical Engineering, Junior
• Nesha Jackson, Medical Technology, Senior
• Oluwaseun Ojimi, Civil Engineering, Senior
• Brie Thompson, Business Administration, Senior

Here is a link to the strategic priorities that the students have identified as well as their project pitch videos.

Congratulations to these 12 students. We look forward to their contributions as Fellows!