The Stitt Scholars Program: Experiential Learning as a Tool for Deep Collaboration Between Business and Engineering Majors

Collaboration in higher education has seen many improvements in recent years. Programs that used to operate in silos incorporate some form of collaboration in their curriculum. However, there is still the need to expand interdisciplinary collaborations through experiential learning. The Stitt Scholars Program provides students from the School of Engineering (SoE) and the School of Business Administration (SBA) the opportunity to collaborate with startup companies at the HUB (powered by the PNC Bank). Each student in the program puts in ten hours of work (paid) each week and participate in lecture series about innovation and entrepreneurship. In Fall 2021, the students (referred to as Stitt Scholars) worked on ten projects. The deliverables from one of the projects was used to secure $15,000 from the PNC Bank to support black-owned businesses in the greater west Dayton area. In this session, the students will share their experiences as Stitt Scholars, and the impact they have made. Lessons learned will also be presented. Generally, the experience has been positive and impactful for the students, the donor, and the startup companies. The successful execution of the program in fall 2021 led to an additional donation of $100,000 to further grow the program.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/3740/thumbnail.jp