After an Open House held on April 25th for all UConn Stamford Faculty, Students and Staff, the new Stamford Learning Accelerator launched three student projects this summer during its Summer Orientation, less than one month later, on Tuesday, May 29th. Two projects are for the new International Business Accelerator (IBA) and one is for the formation of a new Student Advertising Agency in Stamford, in conjunction with UConn’s Digital Media Center.
19 students and six faculty mentors across multiple school disciplines such as business, chemical engineering, physics and economics are participating in the projects. While the student teams are based in Stamford, some students are participating from both the Storrs Campus and the Graduate Business Learning Center (GBLC) in downtown Hartford. Students include undergraduates and graduates, as well as one Ph.D. Faculty include Fred Carstensen Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic Analysis at UConn; Robert Johnson, Associate Professor in Residence of the Operations and Information Management Department; Dr. Richard Parnas, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mike Roer, Adjunct Professor and President of the Entrepreneurship Foundation.
The International Business Accelerator is run under the direction of Dr. Tim Dowding, Professor in Residence of the Operations and Information Management Department in Stamford. The UConn Student Agency is the brainchild of Tim Hunter, Director of UConn’s Digital Media Center and Professor in the Schools of Business and Fine Arts. It is being run in conjunction with Brian Brady, Director of the Stamford Learning Accelerator and Instructor in Residence in the School of Business.
The first project involves creating a computer model to determine the optimal revenue generated from processing seaweed (macro algae) into a series of commodities like biofuels, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. In addition, since seaweed absorbs nitrogen from the water, this model will also estimate the commercial value of nitrogen removed from Long Island Sound based on the State of Connecticut Nitrogen Credit Trading Program. The second project is for the development of a proposal to establish an EB-5 Regional Center at UConn Stamford as part of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which is designed to encourage foreign investment in U.S. companies in order to create jobs. The EB-5 Regional Center would be a joint venture between UConn and the Business Council of Fairfield County.
Finally, two full-time MBA students are working with Professors Hunter and Brady in developing the structure, operations model and branding for UConn’s own Student Advertising Agency, which will be working with both internal and external clients on a variety of digital and marketing projects.
The Stamford Learning Accelerator is actively looking for students to participate in projects for the Fall. Please contact Brian Brady, Director of the Stamford Learning Accelerator, at brian.brady@business.uconn.edu for details.
