Started in 2002, I2P originally filled what Nichols calls an “education hole.” Today it’s an independent entity that hosts specialized competitions across the country. ![]() Winning entries are unique, innovative, feasible to implement and address a clear need. The competition forces students to look at the product’s market potential. “We ask if we’ve solved a problem for anybody else.” “Instead of how to start a business, we’re trying to teach how to create a new product or service,” Nichols says. Professor Steven Nichols, I2P’s director, says students from engineering, natural sciences, law and business learn the fundamentals of bringing an idea to the market in a course where teams develop products for I2P. Students from across disciplines come together to create new products that solve problems and fill a market need. Idea To Product, or I2P, is an international, student-led competition for early-stage technology commercialization. The international competition started here, but specialized versions now take place across the country. Idea To Product, or I2P, puts students from different disciplines on teams vying to commercialize the best solutions to everyday problems. In Georgia alone, officials expect graduates of the UTeach programs in Georgia to then go on to teach STEM courses to 160,000 secondary students by 2020. In 2006 the program was expanded nationally, and the model is now being used at 38 other universities.Īs part of Georgia’s Race to the Top plan, the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement awarded grants as much as $1.4 million to Columbus State University, Southern Polytechnic State University and the University of West Georgia to replicate the UTeach program there. Beyond the Forty AcresĪ collaboration between the Colleges of Natural Sciences and Education, UTeach was established in 1997. Of those students, 80 percent remain in the teaching field five years after graduation. Nearly 900 UT students have completed UTeach, 90 percent of whom enter the K-12 teaching profession. “The best and most important thing a university can do to assist public education is to prepare as many of those teachers as possible.” “The biggest problem with the entire K-12 public schooling system is the absence of science and math qualified teachers,” Marder says. The UTeach program brings college students to elementary and high school classrooms to begin the process of becoming a teacher with hands-on experience under master teachers. “They get in a room full of kids and realize this is what they were born to do.” “Half of the people who graduate with us weren’t thinking of teaching when they arrived,” says Michael Marder, director of UTeach Natural Sciences. UTeach enables undergraduate students to earn a degree in a science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) field while also completing a secondary teaching certificate, paving the way for graduate school or a career in either a STEM field or teaching. ![]() ![]() Other states have replicated the program’s success, aiming to improve the quality of teachers entering the workforce. UTeach lets college students consider teaching as a possible career path by taking students in a STEM degree program into high school classrooms.
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