Nov. 8—University of Texas Permian Basin’s Student-Made program will be participating in the Association of University Research Parks annual meeting in Bentonville, Ark., next week.
Brian Shedd, executive director of the Office of Innovation & Commercialization at UTPB, said AURP is a collection of university research parks.
Shedd said they will be presenting alongside the co-founder of Student-Made, Lindsay Reeth. The title of the presentation is “Leveraging Creative Students to Grow Campus Entrepreneurship.”
They were invited to the conference because AURP was looking for topics around innovative student programming.
“We submitted for Student-Made because we are the first university to have a Student-Made store in Texas. It was really aimed at trying to get more students involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Shedd said.
They have already seen one example of a Student-Made student graduating and starting her own shop. Shedd said they would love to see more examples of that.
Student-Made has pop ups around campus. There is a display case at the library, which offers good visibility.
There are about 10 students involved on the creative and management side.
“It’s giving students opportunities to reach a broader market, to learn the basics of how to turn their passion and art and hobby into a career. For the managers, they learn how to run an online retail store. They get insight into all of that. I think it’s been pretty good so far. We’ve had some some good outcomes from it,” Shedd said.
Being selected to attend the conference being held November 11-14 is a great chance to get UTPB’s name out there.
“The universities that have research parks are typically a lot larger than UTPB, but I think this is just a great opportunity for us to get our name out there and put us on the map,” Shedd said.
Abby Kincaid, campus manager for the Student-Made program, said UTPB is a smaller campus and this is only the second year of its existence there.
“We have a team of five student managers. We have one manager who is completing their hiring process, and we have five student-creators,” Kincaid said.
There are a few more student-creators coming in.
“These student-creators have the ability to create anything they’re interested in. Our creators currently make items such as crotchet items, pins, painting, jewelry and more,” Kincaid added.
“I have enjoyed being a part of Student-Made as this is my first year! It has been and continues to be a very rewarding experience. I enjoy gaining the experience of a manager role and the connections I have made with peers. I am looking forward to continuing as a manager with Student-Made moving forward and growing our organization,” she added.
There are 14 campuses with Student-Made nationwide and more than 200 creators.
Kincaid said they had a pop-up that was very successful.
These events help students get their business out there, get marketing experience, gives them a confidence boost, or branch off to another business.
Aia Andonovska, program manager of Student-Made, said they want students to have a positive experience and spread their wings. Those who join can be managers and creators.
Creators can make art products or services such as tutoring or photography.
“We are always recruiting. We accept new creators into the program at any point,” Andonovska said.
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