By Rick Berkey, Professor of Practice and Director, The Enterprise Program
Welcome to the Fall 2021 issue of the Enterprise Program Newsletter. And welcome to early November in Houghton — as you can see in this photo, Mt. Ripley may get a head start on the ski season if this keeps up!
With our Fall 2021 semester well underway, we have plenty of great news and highlights to share in this issue. Despite the global pandemic, external sponsorship and project support remains strong. Similarly, Spring 2021 Enterprise enrollment was the highest since 2008, with combined team and module course enrollments of 901 students! While external support and enrollment metrics only tell part of the story, both are signals of the value of Enterprise — for students, program partners, and employers of Enterprise graduates. Looking further at enrollment, we see growth across campus, consistent with our efforts to expand and provide experiential learning opportunities. Fun fact: while engineering majors represent ~75% of Enterprise enrollment, students from 24 unique majors outside of engineering now participate in Enterprise. Teams like Hotforest, CinOptic, and the newly launched H-STEM Enterprise (featured in this issue) are helping fuel this growth. And, what’s even more encouraging is that our enterprises are becoming more interdisciplinary: the “average” enterprise enrolls 36 students from six unique majors!
Along with many new student faces, we have seven new faculty serving as advisors or co-advisors. Please join me in welcoming Nick Hendrickson (MMET), David Labyak (MMET), Tim Havens (CS), Joe Azzarello (Chem Eng), Robert Handler (Chem Eng), Steven Elmer (KIP), and Shane Oberloier (ECE) to our Enterprise community. As usual, we also have several team highlights to share since our summer newsletter, so without further delay, please read on and enjoy!
— Go Huskies!