Fostering applied innovation in higher education: the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance

The pursuit of open-ended commercially focused projects provides opportunities for students to use design and problem solving skills, techniques and tools in a multi-disciplinary team setting. Through this process, students gain the skills, knowledge, confidence and commitment to rest their inventive and entrepreneurial skills in the world. This paper provides an overview of a program that supports the development of new approaches to engaging students with innovation by providing opportunities for the creation of new products and ventures as part of the educational experience. The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) is an independent interdisciplinary educational program supported by The Lemelson Foundation to foster and promote the teaching of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship in higher education. The NCIIA facilitates and supports innovative collaborative learning structures at colleges and universities nationwide. A major focus of the NCIIA grants program has been in supporting course and program creation in technical and engineering schools. These courses provide an effective approach to meeting ABET Criterion 3 outcome requirements by integrating technical and non-technical aspects of applied innovation in an organic way to encourage creativity, self reliance and the emergence of inventive competence. NCIIA grants and resources have supported the development of these courses and the continuation of promising student projects towards commercialization.