PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (April 8, 2020) – Prairie View A&M University will be well represented during the University Innovation Fellows (UIF) program’s Silicon Valley Meetup this August.
Kehlin Swain
After being hand-selected from an international community of 2,200, not one, but two fellows from PVAMU will be serving as student event leaders: Kehlin Swain, an alumnus of the computer engineering program, and Tiara Johnson, a senior majoring in business. They will join 27 other young leaders in giving presentations on their UIF work to 400 student and faculty attendees.
“I wanted to create an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem to increase the average income from my classmates at PVAMU,” Swain said about his decision to apply for the fellowship. “UIF was a perfect opportunity to learn how the ecosystem works.”
His session topic for the 2020 meetup, “Small Steps,” will cover how small wins over time can lead to big success. His first fellowship experience in 2015 focused on the topics of robotics and web development.
“I worked for NASA and was a part of a rocket launch. Seeing something as tall as a skyscraper lift off the ground opened my eyes to what’s possible in the world,” he explained.
Johnson applied for the fellowship in 2018 with the goal of establishing a non-profit to improve college readiness among low-income students over the course of the year.
Tiara Johnson
“A problem that I will solve in the world today is graduation rates in poor communities in grade levels 9-12,” she stated in her application video. “The way that I will solve this problem is by building a non-profit to help [students in] grade levels 9-12 get accepted into a four-year university or college-ready course.”
She established the LIVE (Leading Innovative Venture Entrepreneurs) mentoring program, which covers everything from etiquette and professional development, to helping participants build a business plan and pitch investors.
A Chance to Lead
The UIF program is a global program run by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school). It empowers student leaders to increase campus engagement with innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity and design thinking.
“It was amazing to see so many agents of change from different universities and countries all in one place for a common mission of Innovating higher education,” Swain said of his previous experience.
The culture at PVAMU not only encouraged Johnson and Swain to pursue excellence with the University Innovation Fellowship, but put them in unique positions to succeed in the program.
“One of the strengths of going to college at Prairie View is being able to see different trends at scale,” Swain explained, “This puts me in a position to take advantage of different industries that were of interest at PVAMU.”
Johnson agreed with the benefits of campus extracurriculars, and even proposed that such activities be mandatory for students.
“If I were to change one thing, I would make it a requirement for every student to join an organization depending on their interest of career,” Johnson said in her fellowship application video.
Innovation Inspiration
Success begets success, especially when it comes to entrepreneurial endeavors.
Johnson was able to quickly establish her mentorship program as a result of the fellowship and recruit students from a variety of majors to serve as mentors.
Their goal is to encourage participants to explore beyond typical career paths. “[We want them] to learn networking and opportunities are endless,” she explained in her program materials.
Swain used his experience with UIF to test and launch his sports performance company, Xplosion Tech.
As a fellow, Swain was able to create a landing page and validate his idea, launch a GoFundMe, raise money from investors, and even get prepaying customers to ensure his business would be a success.
His hard work paid off, and he continues to implement what he learned.
“We have iterated Xplosion business quite a bit because we have learned about the lean startup methods, and this has probably saved us thousands of hours in development time,” he said of the impact of learning design thinking.
There’s no denying that the University Innovation Fellowship is a chance to make a difference, and the Silicon Valley Meetup in August will be the perfect chance to highlight the impact these fellows have made.
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By Marley Crusch