Agents of change: Dal hosts student innovation fellows

Two Dal students have been selected to take part in a Stanford University-linked program aimed at fostering innovation and entrepreneurship on post-secondary campuses — the first individuals outside the U.S. to be invited to take part.

Fifth-year Management student Justin Javorek and Engineering graduate student Dhruv Bhatia were named University Innovation Fellows (UIF) this fall after Dal was approached in the summer about hosting the first international pilot.

“In recognition of what we’ve been able to accomplish here at Dal, they chose us as a good university to pilot the first international program,” says Mary Kilfoil, assistant professor in the Rowe School of Business who acts as a coordinator of the university’s UIF program through the Norman Newman Centre for Entrepreneurship (NNCE)’s “Launch Dal” initiative.

Run by Epicenter — an organization funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and directed by Stanford University and student startup network VentureWell — the UIF program empowers students to become “agents of change” and champions of entrepreneurship at their universities and colleges.

As part of the application process, Javorek and Bhatia had to create a landscape map of all the initiatives and research going on at the university and showcase the different stages of innovation from discovery level to company spinouts.

“Anything that had to do with entrepreneurship or innovation, we put all in one map,” says Javorek, who studies Entrepreneurship and Informatics. “Then our mandate is to eventually connect all these stakeholders.”

Javorek and Bhatia have wasted no time in getting to work in raising awareness of opportunities around Dal’s campuses. Since being named as fellows in late October, they have set up a cross-faculty student group called the Dalhousie Entrepreneurship Society and attended a UIF-wide information-sharing event at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

They also organized and hosted an ocean-science themed startup weekend event called “Hackamarine” that brought together students from oceans, computer science, engineering and management to work on idea generation for potential startups.

“We felt there was a gap in a way that needed to be addressed,” says Javorek of the event, which took place in early November in the Collider space in the Killam Library.

Different paths to UIF

Javorek — an international student from Slovakia — first took an interest in entrepreneurship a couple of years ago when he worked for a time at Goalline, a N.S.-based sports administration software startup.

Since then, he has gotten more deeply involved in that world: supporting related extracurricular activities at Dal, interning at Halifax startup incubator Volta Labs and developing his own software business called Pet Konekt that helps pet-service providers boost revenues. Javorek was also recently one of 36 people selected from more than 1,100 students and recent grads across Canada and the U.S. to enter into Next 36, one of Canada's most prestigious entrepreneurship programs.

Javorek says he wants to help create a more vibrant ecosystem at Dal and encourage more students to view entrepreneurship as a viable career path on par with being a lawyer or a doctor.

Bhatia echoes Javorek’s sentiments, saying many students now have a mindset focussed on getting out of university and into a position with an existing company.

“It’s very difficult to get into their brain and change that particular concept of working for somebody else to working for yourself. But the more we work, the more we’ll see our ecosystem growing,” says 25-year-old Bhatia, who is now in his final year of the Internetworking masters program at Dal.

Bhatia also has direct experience with entrepreneurship, having started his own clothing company back in his home country India. He hopes to one day expand his company into Canada, but that project is currently on hold as he completes his degree.

As a fellow, Bhatia has worked to create a stronger connection between the initiatives happening on Studley Campus and those happening on Sexton Campus, where he and other engineering students have many of their classes and events. He and Javorek have met with stakeholders working on the IDEA Building, which is still in the planning stages and will act as a new innovation hub for Sexton.

Making waves

Javorek and Bhatia hope to hold another startup weekend event in the new year, perhaps focussing this time on health-related fields. They will also spend a day at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California with other UIF members and attend other networking functions at Stanford University, where Epicenter is based.

While fellowship fees and some travel costs are covered by the university through the NNCE, the fellows are not tied directly to any specific organization.

And that’s just the way it should be, says Dr. Kilfoil.

“Students want to make a difference. There’s a huge power in having students be ambassadors for innovation and entrepreneurship and agents of change on their own campus,” she says. “Fellows acquire the training, tools, and  frameworks needed to identify gaps on their campuses, create new learning opportunities and inspire their peers to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.”