Background on the Bachelor of Innovation
This is a program unique to the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) which provides students
with real world career experience as well as the education and essential skills to be ready to be deployed into the workforce.
This includes additional education in various subjects including business law, technical writing, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
The Bachelor of Innovation (BI) is a program unique to the University of Colorado and is the only program like it throughout the United States. This program gives students the opportunity to acquire real world experience working with clients and gain the skills they need to be ready for the workforce. Regardless of what position you are hiring for, companies seek individuals who have experience and who are qualified for the position. This program makes it so that students have that experience out of college and have the skills and qualifications for the job they intend to apply for. As a student in the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) Innovation program, I have personally seen how this program has the ability to impact my life and those of my peers through its truly unique and powerful program. Throughout my degree program I have gained career experience, I have shown strength throughout my experiences, and I have experienced hope throughout my journey as a student in the Bachelors of Innovation program.
With the B.I, I have gained valuable experience for my career, working with teams, leading teams, and for working with hi-stakes clients.
As a senior, I led a 6-person mobile app development team that designed and developed a prototype health and fitness mobile application for a wellness clinic.
This application gives medical professionals the ability to import medical testing data to a customer’s profile.
This then is used to help the client’s customers become aware of their deficiencies and allow them to track and monitor nutrients through the food they eat.
This mobile application helps users make healthier choices and therefore improve their overall health.
My work on this project included project management, assisting with, and improving the technical designs created by the client’s team,
developing the frontend of the mobile application, and implementing the backend infrastructure the mobile application would need to function.
As a junior, I served as an Innovation consultant in a 6-person event planning team that planned a cyber security speaking panel and technical
conference to be held in partnership with the UCCS Innovation Program. My work on this project included researching and contacting potential speakers, venues, and caterers.
Our team also created an extensive budgeting document for our client to allow them to proceed with the planned event.
As a sophomore, I served as an Innovation Consultant in 5-person team for a tour company based in Vermont.
Our team improved our client’s advertising and marketing for the company by enhancing the presentation of the client’s website, increasing his social media presence,
and performing search engine optimization for his website. Additional work included redesigning his logo, creating travel brochures for various trips,
and providing recommended advertising and marketing strategies in the capacity of innovation consultants.
Throughout my experiences as a student in the UCCS Innovation program, I have had many circumstances where I have had to embody strength and instances where I have seen my team members demonstrate strength.
As a Senior, I had to show strength through my position as a team lead.
I had to support our team through difficult interactions with our client, uncertainty through the process of defining our scope of work, and with learning processes, tools,
and software our group had never worked with before. My team members stayed strong despite uncomfortable conversations with our client, being given a project with a massive scope,
and having to learn the tools to create our deliverable as we developed.
As a Junior, our team showed strength by learning how to handle failure well and utilizing innovation to make the best out of a challenging situation.
I learned to collaborate with my team better and improvise how I approached my role in the group, as I adjusted to difficult group dynamics.
We learned how to break through barriers that limited our potential and stunted our creativity and our ability to improvise.
We changed how we viewed the situation we were in and found new was to collaborate and approach the project. Through this experience I became a better communicator and teammate.
Working on this project taught me to be more resilient in my efforts to deal with issues I knew existed.
I was also able to improve my skills at doing my part to make sure the group will be successful and maintain a positive outcome.
Through this experience, our team gained the ability to become aware of common pitfalls that occur in teams and take measures to prevent them in the future.
As a Sophomore, I showed strength by supporting my team in moving forward with our project despite the apathy our client showed towards our project and work.
Our team learned how to deal with an un-responsive client by taking charge of our direction and showing strength through resilience.
Our client did not give our team the direction or feedback that we felt we needed to be successful, nor did he seem interested in working with us.
However, our team took ownership and made many of the decisions, moving forward with ideas we thought would benefit our client the most.
I also supported our team to ensure we maintained momentum and motivation regardless of the situations we encountered.
Many of us lost motivation and interest in working on the project because we felt that the client did not want our help or care about what we were doing.
Despite this situation, we were able to perform well working in a subject area that our team did not have strong skills in and created a deliverable that improved the marketing and advertising for the client and his company.
Another huge part of being in the UCCS Innovation program for me, is the hope that I encountered through my experiences and the hope I have given others through the work I have done.
As a Senior, my team experienced hope once we solidified our scope of work and we began to pick up momentum working as a team.
Beforehand, we all were concerned about where the project was going and the lack of progress.
However, we worked relentlessly with our client to narrow a scope of work and define a deliverable we could accomplish within the period of time we had for the project.
Our team also experienced hope once we began get a handle on the new tools and software we were using for development.
For our client, he experienced hope as he began to see his initial idea come to fruition through the means of a working prototype at the end of the semester.
As a 3010, I experienced hope when we found an innovative way to approach our challenges and make the best out of a difficult situation.
We created a new project, changed clients, and planned a guide for future event planning within the Bachelors of Innovation program.
We also laid the foundation for a cyber security speaking event that another team could pick up and continue working on the following semester.
Our client experienced hope as they saw us take on the challenge of creating a new event and as we laid the groundwork for future events for our University.
As a 2010, I experienced hope when we found a way to push through the difficulties we were experiencing with our client.
Despite the difficulties we encountered, we found hope as we powered through difficult interactions with our client and stepped up to the plate when we dealt with lack of feedback and guidance for our work.
In the end, we were able to complete a portfolio that would improve the marketing and advertising of our client’s company.
Through my time in the Bachelors of Innovation, I have gained valuable experience for my career and I have shown strength and found hope throughout this process.
The Bachelors of Innovation is an amazing opportunity that provides students with valuable career experience which makes them effective and qualified candidates for any job position.
Through the experience I have gained through this program, I hope to make a positive impact on whatever company I work for and do something that benefits the lives of others.
