Beyond Boundaries Program Newsletter - December 2021 Issue

Beyond Boundaries DECEMBER NEWSLETTER

Happy Holidays!

Welcome to the December Newsletter!

There's a lot going on in the Beyond Boundaries Program and a lot to celebrate. Scroll down to check out what our students have been up to!

IN THE NEWS

Sending off Emma Singh, BB'23 This month, the Beyond Boundaries Program sends off Emma Singh, a member of Beyond Boundaries' class of 2023. By tackling a steady course-load of 21 credits each semester, Emma was able to graduate with degrees in Political Science and Economics in just 5 semesters.

Congratulations to Emma on her early graduation and we wish her all the best in her future endeavors!

Epixego meet up This month, students from the class of 2025 cohort met up with their Epxiego "nearpeers"— current students of the Beyond Boundaries Program and recent alumni.

During the virtual meetup, students had the opportunity to speak to mentors from a variety of careers, from Production Assistants at NBCUniversal to researchers for Racial Equality.

The meetup was made possible by Epixego, a platform designed to help college students connect with role models and mentors, with a particular focus on fostering connections across disciplines. Users are assigned "competency profiles" based on their professional and academic experiences, and then matched with users with similar skill profiles. To learn more about Epixego, check out their website here.

St. Louis Entrepreneurial Fellowship Five students from the first-year cohort applied and were accepted into the 2022 St. Louis Entrepreneurial Fellowship, hosted by the Skandalaris Center. The year-long fellowship will start with an accredited course on the culture of innovation in St. Louis, and will include visits to local incubators and start-ups. Over the summer, fellows will stay on campus and be guaranteed a paid internship at an earlystage start-up. The fellowship will culminate in a capstone project where students implement their own solution to a local issue.

Congratulations to these students and we're excited to follow their journey!

The Skandalaris Center This month, program director Rob Morgan sat down on the Beyond Boundaries Podcast with Jessica Weldon and Cyril Loum to talk about the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship. WashU has consistently ranked amongst the top schools in the nation for entrepreneurial programs, and that is largely thanks to the Skandalaris Center.

Beyond offering the annual St. Louis Entrepreneurial fellowship, the Skandalaris Center also holds entrepreneurial competitions including the Skandalaris Venture Competition and the Global Impact Award. These awards rewards offers the winning ventures up to $50,000 in prize money to help students jump start their ideas. Tune in to the podcast to hear more about Jessica and Cyril's journeys in the Skandalaris Center!

WHAT'S YOUR STORY? WashU prides itself on knowing the names and stories of every student. Beyond Boundaries students are also asked to share their big question, a question too big to be answered by the tools of just one discipline, when they apply. This month, we sit down with Elizabeth Joseph to hear her story.

ELIZABETH JOSEPH Kansas City, Class of 2023 WHAT'S YOUR BIG QUESTION? Ok, To contextualize the big question: I feel like in high school, I would walk a foot, and everywhere I looked there would be someone suffering from a variety of health issues and processing them on their own. I think it really fits the theme of interdisciplinary because health is intertwined with everything. Like how are you gonna be able to learn at school if you’re distracted by your growling stomach? How are you gonna learn in a conventional classroom if you are suffering from certain learning disabilities?

Or how does a pandemic impact our mental health?

Seeing these problems that arise in the everyday moments was really my spark into public health and interdisciplinary learning. So, to get back to your question, I started off with exploring the intersection between the art, education, and mental health. I wanted to find community based tools that we can use to prevent mental health issues before they become severe. Of course the question has changed and evolved over time, but I think it’s still in that vein but less art-oriented.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED? I've had a lot of career-related opportunities since the end of high school. So, the summer before WashU, I was working at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City. I was interning and learning about education initiatives. Then the summer before my sophomore year I worked at an arts education non-profit. And finally, last summer I began working at RedCircle, which is a health and racial equity non-profit located here in St. Louis.

It’s hard to put forth a united big story since it’s so hard to distill what I’ve learned from all these different experiences because they’re all so intertwined with each other. But ultimately, I think I have two domains that my passions can be divided into: one being health, including policy and health education through working with Red Circle. The other domain being more culturally oriented, like racial equity. For example, on WashU’s campus, I’m involved with Ekta, which is a south-asian discussion group that focuses on organizing and activism. And one thing I've learned from these experiences is the power of community-based solutions. So for example, at Red Circle, a lot of our work is focused around North County, and an issue we've been trying to solve recently is: how do we distribute nutritious produce and make sure all people have access to fresh food? In response, one of the solutions our organization is working on right now is creating a co-op grocery store within North County to alleviate the food desert.

MAKING EARRINGS! I also make earrings in my free time! It’s my fun artsy hobby that kinda started in middle school. It was messy at first and I put it down after high school started. Of course, when quarantine hit, it felt like as good of a time as any to get back into it. Eventually, I started an instagram account and taking commissions from people for making custom earrings. The earring “business” started during the pandemic though, if you even consider it a business, and I felt weird about taking money for myself when I didn’t really need it. So every month I would donate half of my profits to a different cause.

The earring project really demonstrates a philosophy that underlies most of my work and studies, which is making sure I give back to the community as much as I am taking. For example, WashU as an institution is granted non-profit status, meaning the university doesn’t pay taxes on its properties or the tuition collected from students. Hence, as students, our purchases through the university aren’t taxed, unlike local residents. So I think we should be conscious of the fact that about the impact of our presence in St. Louis, and ask yourselves once in a while: what have I done for this city in my 4 years here?

COURSE HIGHLIGHTS

ENDGAME OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP: Leveraging capitalism for good

Endgame of Entrepreneurship is a course offered through the Beyond Boundaries Program with support from both the Skandalaris Center and the Olin Business School. The class is jointly taught by II Luscri, managing director of the Skandalaris Center, and Joe Steensma, Proffessor of the Brown School who has founded several thriving businesses focused on public health. Additionally, four MBA(Master of Business Administration) candidates were aboard the teaching team, offering their own wisdom to student teams.

This semester, students began by learning the advantages of the profit-driven motives of capitalism, as well some of its inherent consequences. True to the name of the course, students then applied their new knowledge towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals — a set of goals that addresses some of the most urgent issues impacting the globe.

For the majority of the course, students were divided into teams, and given the task of coming up with a for-profit business that addresses a Sustainable Development Goal. Through weekly team meetings, students were able to bring their ideas step-by-step through the start-up process, conducting customer discovery with local start-up experts and eventually creating prototypes of their solution. The course finale took form in an Ideabounce pitch, where teams pitched their business plans to a room full of judges.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT BB COURSES: HTTPS://BEYONDBOUNDARIES.WUSTL.EDU/PROGRAM/COURSES

BAGELS OR DONUTS? It's the age old question, one that we ask all our panelists during the Beyond Boundaries Seminar. This month, we attempted to settle the question once and for all by offering program students either a bagel or a donut. The winner?

BAGELS! MORE WAYS TO CONNECT WITH US:

FOLLOW AND LISTEN TO THE PODCAST!