Students have the chance to earn credits and experience while helping out local businesses, thanks to the Innovation Design & Entrepreneurial Action Team Exchange program offered by the U of M.
The IDEATE program lets students earn internship credit by taking on short-term projects for local businesses. The companies agree to grant a group of college students the opportunity to improve their company.
Last semester, one team of four students helped St. Jude with their business. Their work was cut out for them—St. Jude is a national organization, and the students had only five weeks to come up with a plan.
Coordinator of Leadership Programs at the U of M, Jon Campbell advised the group. He says that the idea for the IDEATE program came from his supervisor.
“When I heard about it, I leapt at the opportunity to work it into our sophomore [Emerging Leaders] curriculum,” Campbell said.
As the roster or companies willing to participate is ever-changing, the challenge for Campbell is creating partnerships with companies that fit well with the 50 students in his class.
“I fully recognize that IDEATE projects are not going to present scenarios that are a perfect fit for all majors,” Campbell said. “I don't anticipate students are going to get a lot of technical knowledge around their chosen major.”
Even so, Campbell hopes that his students gain valuable skills from participating in the program by increasing their confidence and efficiency. For this reason, Campbell decided to embed it into his class.
“I set out to include professional development pieces into each Emerging Leaders class,” Campbell said. “Instead of just telling students they needed to complete an internship and look for opportunities to connect with local professionals, IDEATE created this opportunity for students to experience smaller parts of each.”
Junior business management major Alexis Bingham was one of the students who worked with St. Jude. She believes that the rewards were worth the work.
“I developed skills of delegation, problem solving and working under the pressures of deadlines and expectations,” Bingham said.
Bingham co-lead the team to success and landed an internship with St. Jude for the summer.
“When this opened I was thrilled with it,” Bingham said. “It allowed me to have the opportunity to work with, meet and present to the members of the Executive Leadership Committee and the Senior Leadership Committee.”
For Campbell, the success of Bingham’s team helped convince him that he had made the right decision.
“I was proud and not surprised to have students offered internships,” said Campbell. “It further solidified my desire to continue the partnership that led to IDEATE becoming part of my class.”
Sophomore J.T Taylor is excited to have the opportunity to participate in the program later in the semester.
“I think it will be interesting to see the real problems companies face, and how it will be in the cooperate world,” he said.
Bingham hopes that more professors would implement this in their classrooms, and that students take the opportunity when given.
“I would recommend this to all professors,” Bingham said. “It is a short term, real life example of what I have been learning in school. This is extremely rare [for] college undergraduate students to have, and this sets you apart from others when it comes to applying for jobs.”
