uMux Proposal

uMuxGeorgia Institute of Technology LCC 3403 Section MG6Atlanta, GA 30309

uMux Proposal

Proposal Issued:02.23.2013

Prepared for:

Patrick McHenryGeorgia Institute of Technology

P 404 894 1023 E [email protected]

uMux Project # 1Student, Faculty & Teacher Perceptions

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Alex Oxford | Francesca Malenky | Alex Goldsmith | Jordan Lockwood

Why uMux?When the word “interdisciplinary” comes to mind, most people tend to think about multiple colleges within the university that represent different majors. At Georgia Tech, we are considered interdisciplinary because we have six different colleges: Architecture, Computing, Engineering, Liberal Arts, Business, and Sciences. uMux wants to change that. We want to go beyond just having different colleges; we want to have them integrated and work together in a way that exponentially increases the innovation that comes out of Tech. Engineering students along with Business students coupled with Science students would have the power to change the world in a way that is beyond our comprehension if they would only work together.

This is where we see the opportunity to lead universities into the 21st century. Our idea is a direct response to the Strategic Vision plan as laid out by President Peterson. Our idea is this:

Start with a platform that students and faculty can form various “projects” that need people with different experiences to come on board. For example, a Biomedical Engineering student may be working on the development of a new device but needs to write a business plan in order to get a grant. They would turn to this platform to seek the help of a Business student/faculty member.

This is a great way to begin developing a community

...we want to focus not just on bringing people together, but also making the Georgia Tech degree more valuable so

that gradutes will have the skills and abilities to make a profound impact.

of collaboration amongst the colleges that is currently lacking. It also provides a setting for people to discuss ongoing research and projects that are looking to solve various problems.

The next step would be to integrate these “projects” into some form of credit towards a degree. We propose changing the Senior Design projects to be required for all majors and to include multiple majors on every team. We believe these experiences are extremely valuable not only for personal development but also for professional development. Being able to work with people with different educational backgrounds and knowledge sets is extremely important in the modern workforce.

Finally, we would like to see a cultural shift in regards to how a student views their major. We would like to move beyond being simply defined by a field of study. We want Georgia Tech students to go beyond the borders of their colleges and be defined by their passions.

Ultimately, we want to focus not just on bringing people together, but also making the Georgia Tech degree more valuable so that graduates will have the skills and abilities to have a profound impact. And that’s why we are proposing to create the University Multidisciplinary Exchange Network.

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uMux | Project Proposal

Student Questionnaire Created February 27th, 2013

Faculty Interview Questions Finalized March 4th, 2013

Student Questionnaires Collected March 6th, 2013

All Faculty Interviews Complete March 20th, 2013

Project Timeline

Topics to Investigate

We plan to consider the following questions in detail:

1. What do Georgia Tech students think about the uMux platform?

(a) Do students show overall support of uMux?

(b) What are students’ first impressions?

(c) Would students use uMux, and how?

2. What do Georgia Tech teachers and faculty think about the uMux platform?

(a) Do they believe this is a good idea?

(b) Would they encourage students to use uMux?

(c) Would they sponsor special uMux projects?

(d) What suggestions might they have on the formation and implementation of uMux?

Over the course of the semester we will set our first plan in motion by gathering information that will allow us to design a successful platform.

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We are confident that uMux will help keep Georgia Tech at the forefront of innovation in higher education. We ask that you please forward any suggestions or criticism to us. Please accept our proposal so that we may begin work immediately.

Gatekeeper: Patrick McHenry

Primary: Bud Peterson and Board of Regents

Secondary: Students and Faculty of Georgia Tech

Auxillary: Students and Faculty of Sister Schools

Watchdogs: Innovation Task Force, Revitalizing

Undergraduate Education Committee

Our Audience

Methods & Feasability

In order to reach our goals we need to gather information about our product to see if it is feasible. We want to get feed-back from our primary and secondary audience so that we can truly understand the practicality of our design. Georgia Tech has six different colleges that contains faculty and stu-dents with contrasting views and opinions. With each angle of our project analyzed, the product as a whole will become more durable and concise.

We will create an online survey that will be sent out to a pop-ulation of Georgia Tech students from every single college. Within each survey we will emphasize the specific questions that will help our idea grow: how they will use the platform, what they want the platform to provide, and how they want the platform to appear. We will also give each student a chance to give suggestions on how to help us reach our goals. The target population size that we feel will provide reli-able data is 200 students. However, we understand that this may be beyond the scope of our abilities given one semester.

The students are not the only audience from which we want to garner information. The faculty will be one of our biggest priorities with gathering support. Getting two faculty mem-bers from every college to give us input and feedback on our ideas and goals would be highly beneficial. Each faculty member will receive a face to face interview that will last approximately 15 minutes. They will provide details on how successful they feel the platform can be and if they would personally use the platform and work with potential students that were taking advantage of the opportunity.

After gathering as much information as possible we would then approach the career center and present our goals and research. We hope that they will provide input on if par-ticipating in a project would be an asset on an individual’s resumés and how a project would be perceived by employ-ers. We believe that gathering this research is an appropriate and feasible goal for this semester. The information is readily available though time consuming to collect.

Documents

uMux Proposal