Engineering students join national network of fellows

Two Grand Valley engineering students have been chosen to be fellows by the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation, a national network of students who work to ensure their peers gain knowledge and skills required to join the workforce. 

Leah Bauer, from Pinckney, and Kathryn Christopher, from Portage, join a network of 168 fellows from 85 schools across the country. The program empowers student leaders to increase campus engagement with entrepreneurship, creativity and design thinking creation.

Christopher said J. Kevin McCurren, executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, encouraged her and Bauer to apply for the program. The students met McCurren through work on their medical device start-up company, Fluition, which won the Masco undergraduate prize at the Michigan Collegiate Innovation Prize in February 2014. 

Upon acceptance as a fellow, the fourth-year students, who are majoring in product design and manufacturing engineering, completed a six-week training course that included studying entrepreneurial ecosystems and formulating actions plans to implement innovation at Grand Valley. 

“Our plan is to help connect the biomedical sciences and engineering colleges to help bring existing problems in the medical field to the attention of student engineers who can solve them,” said Christopher. 

Bauer said students across the country will have the opportunity to learn from each other by attending conferences and events, and meeting with leaders in their industry. 

Bauer and Christopher are sponsored by McCurren and John Farris, professor of biomedical and product design and manufacturing engineering. 

The National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter) program is run by Stanford University and VentureWell, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.