
The role of higher education is not to just educate and train students but to inspire them to think bigger and broader about making meaningful change in their community, and that is just what happened to a group of University of Tulsa students when they participated in the University Innovation Fellows program, an experience that culminated in an incredible trip to the Netherlands earlier this year.
University Innovation Fellows are a global community of students motivated to become agents of change at their individual schools. Students range from undergraduates to doctoral candidates and from engineering researchers to art majors, but all demonstrate a passion for innovation, creativity, and the entrepreneurial mindset as well as a drive to make a lasting impact at their schools. The program is run by Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school).
“The program is sort of like an organization on campus mixed with a class, very hands on,” said Jasmine Cherifi, a management and marketing senior in the Collins College of Business and one of the students in the Tulsa cohort. “We underwent an immersive eight-week training process in the fall 2023 semester that leverages design thinking and problem-solving methodologies.”
The primary focus of the UTulsa group was to address and solve challenges on the university’s campus, aiming to elevate the impact of their initiatives through collaboration with individuals who also show interest in innovation and entrepreneurship. The team explored many ideas throughout their training and held a stakeholder meeting with faculty, staff, and students from across campus. Then they realized something: Rather than just limit it to the four students on the team, they wanted to include the entire campus in the challenge.

From this was born the UTulsa Idea-a-thon (also known as the Idea Challenge), a weeklong event held in spring 2024 that witnessed multiple teams of students unleash their creativity and contribute groundbreaking ideas in their presentations tackling something that can be improved or fixed on campus. “We believe that some of the most innovative solutions come from within our community, and this challenge provided a unique opportunity to showcase the wealth of talent we have,” Cherifi said. It was a major success and may be held annually on campus through the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and JOLT programs.
The challenge did not end in Tulsa. With a desire to facilitate global connections and expand its horizons, the d.school program sent all 2023-24 cohort fellows on a trip to Enschede in the Netherlands for a global meetup that capped months of hard work and effort.
“The experience in the Netherlands was nothing short of amazing. This was my first international and first plane travel. I got the opportunity to see and learn so many amazing things while we were abroad. Some of the programming held at the UIF meetup was amazing. They opened my mind on a professional and personal level, and I hope to bring these ideas back to UTulsa,” Cherifi concluded.