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E-Team Competition
The
Technology E-Team (Entrepreneurial Team) Competition
Program is a unique activity of the Education component.
The E-Team concept has been widely accepted in
the literature as an effective means of engaging students
in entrepreneurial activities. E-teams are groups of students, faculty, and
mentoring professionals who join together to develop
an idea, product, or invention that will generate economic
and social benefits. Our unique approach in our Technology E-Team
Competition Program is that each team consists of one
undergraduate student from each of our four Education Partners.
The selection process of these students is highly
competitive and administered by the individual Education
Partner. Each
team of undergraduate students are then led by a Stony
Brook graduate student and supervised by a Stony Brook
faculty. Each
undergraduate student selected to join the E-Teams receives
a $2K summer scholarship.
Each graduate student in the E-Teams receives
an annual stipend of $18K. We plan to support four E-Teams each year.
It
is our belief that the mixture of students from the
Sensor Consortium’s four Education Partners introduces
an interesting dynamic for the teams. Because most of the industrial projects are expected
to focus on Security and Medical Sensor Systems, we
anticipate each team needs an Electrical/Computer Engineering
student for the hardware aspect of the project and a
Computer Science student for the software aspect. Stony
Brook is responsible for selecting the Electrical/Computer
Engineering students while Hofstra University provides students in the Computer Science major. Farmingdale State College of Technology and Suffolk Community College provide technology-oriented students. Students from each institution bring a unique
experience and background to the teams. For
example, Stony Brook’s students usually have a strong
engineering background and perhaps some research experience. Hofstra University’s students, because of the school’s strong business, may have more
exposure and awareness of entrepreneurial skills. Farmingdale
and Suffolk Community College’s students are expected to possess more hands-on and technology oriented
experience.
Students
joining the Technology E-Team Programs are required
to take a course on Entrepreneurship at Stony Brook. The
course is offered in the Fall Semester and is taught
by Professor Gerrit Wolf from the Harriman School of Management and Policy.
This course is intended to provide the undergraduate
E-Team students with the fundamental tools necessary
to build a business plan around a technical innovation. The course experience is intended to illustrate
entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship as career paths
a student may choose.
The course is developed along parallel paths.
The first path introduces the engineering student
to the process of innovation and the business fundamentals
necessary to plan, and potentially operate, a business
from a technical or engineering standpoint.
The topics covered include: Creativity, Innovation
and Intellectual Property; Planning the Venture; Developing
a Business Plan; Financing the Venture; and Launching
the Venture.
In
the second, and parallel path,
each E-Team works on an industry-sponsored project. With
the help of our Research and Outreach Partners such
as the Sensor CAT and its industrial partners, Long
Island Regional Incubator Council (LIRIC), Long Island
Software and Technology Network (LISTNET), Suffolk County
Economic Development Department, Women Economic Developers
of Long Island (WEDLI), and the IEEE (Institute of Electrical
and Electronic Engineers), a list of RFP (Request for
Proposals) will be collected from local industries.
Each of the four E-Teams will then study these RFPs
and write a proposal that covers the design and commercialization
stages for the product. The proposal includes project
tasks, members assignments,
milestones, progress reports, data collection, data
analysis, and prototyping. The
industrial partners will review these proposals and
provide feedback to the teams. Once an industrial sponsor agreed to accept a
proposal, the E-Team will begin the project with close
supervision by a Stony Brook faculty and a professional
mentor from the industrial sponsor. The weekly meetings of the course are organized
to give relevant support from the experts and reports
from the team on progress made on the project.
Students in the E-Team are expected to participate in team building exercises,
be coached in making presentations, develop experience
in using project management software, and receive mentoring
from faculty advisors in business and engineering, and
entrepreneurs and venture capitalists from industry. Students will finish their project during the
summer months. The
grades for the course will be deferred until the completion
of the project. At the conclusion of the course, each E-Team
will make a presentation to a panel of judges that includes
experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Each
member of the winning team will receive an additional
award of $1,000.
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