ECE LCI-IILean Canvas for Invention and Career Development

 Welcome to ECE 6960-028!

This course was designed to integrate learning about the Lean Canvas invention process with Mentoring and Career Development content and activities that is part of an NSF IGE grant. We recommend you navigate the course by using the Course Modules Link at the bottom of the page.

We are developing this course, because we think graduate students benefit greatly from seeing the big picture in the landscape of research development. A review of the research literature is standard, of course, but how about also exploring the industry that could eventually apply the results of this research? How about the patents and business literature, where new ideas and new problems are also explored? How about meeting and interviewing the working professionals who will be part of your career experiences? And how about exploring the career experiences themselves? Most graduate students know a bit about academia and a little about industry, but there is more than meets the eye, and what about government, non-profit, entrepreneurial, international and national lab opportunities? This course will help you explore these topics and more, focusing on your own individual interests, research and career aspirations. And while most professors are good mentors, we all benefit from a broader matrix of mentors, which we hope to help you begin to develop in this course. This course is an experiment -- quite literally -- and we are excited to work with you to see if we can enhance your graduate school experience in ways that help you prepare for the career you are here to explore.

Your facilitators for different sections of the course will be Dr. Cynthia Furse (research development), Dr. Arabella Bhutto (business aspects of research development) ,Dr. AJ Metz (career development), Dr. Karen Tao (matraix mentoring), Dr. Donna Ziegenfuss (research literature and miultidisciplinary boundary crossing). Mr. Alfred Mowdood and Ms Tallie Casucci will facilitate the session and learning activities on patent searching.

At the end of this course you will be able to:

• Objective 1: Apply an innovative tool, the Lean Canvas for Invention, to graduate research development in engineering
• Objective 2: Optimize the quality and consistency of mentoring interactions and relationships among all members of the research team. In this project, we will be adding formal mentoring components to the LCI. 
• Objective 3: Foster graduate students’ professional competencies, career literacy, career identity, workforce readiness, and the ability to make informed decisions regarding their career paths. In this project, we will formalize, expand and enhance these aspects of the LCI. 

Each week there will be a separate Canvas page that will contain learning materials for this flipped format course:

• The name of the facilitator each week
• Expectations for the week
• Pre-Class Materials
• In-Class Activities 
• Post class assignments 
• Supplemental materials

There will be 3 tabs of content for each week in the Pre-Class Materials section (Lean Canvas, Matrix Mentoring & Career Development). The Tab name that is bolded with 2 explanation points (!!) is the content focus for that week.