Five UR Students Join Global Network of Campus Change Makers

UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND — Five University of Richmond students have been named University Innovation Fellows. The new fellows are juniors Xiaodi Hu, William Walker, and Bingjie Liu, and sophomores Kartikey Sharma and Sandeep Kumar.

The University Innovation Fellows program, run by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, empowers students to become agents of change at their schools and provide student voices to conversations about the future of higher education.

This is the first time UR has participated in this program. 360 students from 90 higher education institutions in 13 countries were chosen to participate this year.

By connecting with other fellows and leaders in academia and industry, fellows explore and develop project proposals and advocate for innovative changes on their campuses.

In the past, fellows have created student innovation spaces, started entrepreneurship organizations, and worked with faculty to develop new courses. 

The UR group completed a six-week online training, which culminated with a series of stakeholder meetings to present their initial findings and ideas. The students are currently revising a set of specific project proposals based on feedback they received from the meetings. The group will spend the rest of the academic year working on the projects and sharing their suggestions with campus leaders.

"These are five students who have worked exceptionally hard to evaluate opportunities for innovation programming on our campus using the tools and resources of this global network,” said Todd Lookingbill, a geography, environmental studies, and biology professor, who served as the UR team’s faculty advisor.

###