Future veterinarian, Rebecka Seward, a Boise State Biology major with strong ties to the College of Health Sciences, has been named a University Innovation Fellow by the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation. Seward has completed six weeks of training and will represent Boise State at the University Innovation Fellows annual meet-up in March in California’s Silicon Valley.
The University Innovation Fellows program empowers students to become agents of change at their schools. Fellows work to ensure that their peers gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to compete in the economy of the future and make a positive impact on the world.
The program is run by Epicenter, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and directed by Stanford University and VentureWell – a nonprofit higher education network on a mission to help an emerging generation of young scientists launch ventures to improve life for people and the planet.  Individual fellows, as well as institutional teams of fellows, are sponsored by faculty and administrators and selected through an application process twice annually.
Much of the research Seward has completed has been with College of Health Sciences faculty. She has worked as a School of Allied Health Sciences Department of Community and Environmental Health student employee for the past two years and is actively involved in a Boise State College of Innovation and Design Vertically Integrated Project related to plasma medicine. Seward will graduate this semester with a bachelor of science in Biology, in preparation for veterinary school.
Seward, along with the other two Boise State fellows, Kelly Schutt and Ann Delaney, has created a landscape analysis on the resources, challenges and opportunities for students to become more engaged with innovation across the Boise State campus. The next steps include a meeting to focus their efforts to align with Boise State’s  College of Innovation and Design and address a specific challenge or opportunity in the campus community. The three will take part in a number of events and conferences in San Francisco and have opportunities to learn from Epicenter mentors, leaders in academia and industry, and from one another.
A total of 155 students from 47 higher education institutions have been named University Innovation Fellows for this year. The fellows advocate for lasting institutional change and create opportunities for students to engage with innovation, entrepreneurship, design thinking and creativity at their schools. During the Silicon Valley meetup March 17-22, which brings together all fellows trained in fall 2015 and spring 2016, fellows will take part in immersive experiences at Google and Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. Fellows who joined the program in the 2014-15 academic year collectively held 112 events and established 35 spaces at their schools.
With the addition of the new fellows, the program has trained 607 students at 143 institutions since the beginning of the Epicenter grant.
Learn more about the University Innovation Fellows at universityinnovationfellows.org.