Design and Innovation Minor

Mary Phelan, Anthropology

The Design and Innovation Minor has added more versatility to my degree in Anthropology and has provided me with valuable hands-on experiences in the courses. The projects in the required courses are great opportunities to learn how to work with cross-disciplinary teams and become comfortable bringing your product ideas to life. After completing the minor, I had a totally different outlook on the career I wanted post-graduation and I feel confident in the skills that I have learned in Design and Innovation to apply them professionally.

Ella McCoy, Integrated Business & Engineering

The Design and Innovation Minor has allowed me to connect what I have learned in my Integrated Business and Engineering courses to the process of developing an idea and creating a product. Taking this minor lets me be creative while also providing me with practical knowledge that expands beyond just the course work. Through these classes, I have developed my presentation skills, critical decision making, and learned how to advocate for myself and my ideas. As a sophomore, this minor has already helped me leverage my skills and experiences to employers, and I know it will continue to benefit me as I complete my degree at Purdue and continue into the professional world.

Ju Na Lee, Electrical Engineering

As someone who is passionate about creating innovative products for social impact, the Design and Innovation minor allowed me to do just that! I was able to apply design thinking skills and learn the foundations of building a business model such as financial planning, and elements of a successful pitch to become a true entrepreneur. I was also able to cross-collaborate with peers across various colleges, which made me look at design problems from a perspective I would have never seen had I worked by myself. Overall, the Design and Innovation minor was a valuable experience not just in terms of the skillsets I learned, but also the people that I was able to meet and network with.

Lauren Robbers, Anthropology

The Design and Innovation minor changed the trajectory of my interests as an Anthropology undergraduate, and provided me with valuable experiences that are currently supporting me in my role at Amazon. I am working on a project that requires me to evaluate a certain group of people in our Fulfillment Center to see how we can create a program to boost the rate of individual goal setting and internal promotions. I wouldn’t know where to start if it weren’t for what I learned in the Design and Innovation Minor.

I am grateful to have been a part of such a wonderful and enriching program while at Purdue, and I am looking forward to applying my Design and Innovation skill set to various aspects of my career!

Katelinn Lentine, Organizational Leadership

When I first heard of the Design & Innovation minor, I immediately saw it as just a way to boost my undergraduate degree. However, the minor is much more than that. This minor can be challenging, but it is also extremely rewarding. The material teaches you how to change your mindset, how to think outside the box, and it even teaches you some fundamental skills that are valued in the workforce, such as leadership and ethics.

“I didn’t know what to expect when taking on this minor, but I can say from experience that it was worth my time. It inspired me, it motivated me, and it gave me confidence in my own abilities. I’m grateful for the skills it taught me and how it helped me improve the ones I already had.”

Nicholas Pride, Supply Chain Management Technology

I really value what was taught to me and how I developed as a student and a thinker. TECH 34000 and the Design and Innovation minor have helped me understand how I think. They helped me in my other classes and have given me a better sense of direction for the future. I feel more confident in becoming an entrepreneur and I take advantage of opportunities when I come across them.

Vanessa Santana, Engineering Technology Teacher Education

There is something amazing about seeing an idea created, supported and refined over my time in the minor. Ultimately, TECH 34000 gave me the opportunity to take an idea that I was working on outside of the classroom, refine it and eventually share it with a company.

Today, that project I had been working on in my spare time, and supported through the class, has been sold and is being distributed to classrooms across the state!

Jackson Otto, Engineering Technology Teacher Education

Participating in the Design and Innovation minor allowed me to expand my network of peers beyond those that I would normally interact with. Being a part of a relatively small major, engineering technology education, I appreciated the opportunity to interact with a group of individuals with diverse knowledge and backgrounds, toward a common goal.

Working with individuals from different fields of study provides a similar structure to the current business world, and developing confidence and the skills to effectively work with multiple peers is certain to benefit me in the future.”

Ben Walters, Biomedical Engineering

The Design and Innovation program provided me with the space, tools and expertise to develop a real product for a problem that real people encounter. This is one of the few programs at Purdue that combines both product and business plan development in a practical, hands-on manner. My professors, Dr. Strimel and Dr. Peoples, went above and beyond to guide my team and me to the best possible solution, while helping us understand how to best utilize the resources available to us.

Zackary Roth, Mechatronics & Robotics Engineering Technology

Speaking on behalf of the team, we all went into the design and innovation curriculum thinking it was a check off for our degrees. It turns out that it was way more than a checkmark. What we thought would be busy work revealed itself to be valuable lessons to help us solve a major problem. The individual assignments in the class allowed us to find underlying issues in the space we chose to research: healthcare. The courses broke this large problem down into many different steps. Within each of these steps, the instructors guided us to solve miniscule issues, as these issues became the path leading us to conquer the larger problem at hand.