Golden Knights Rise
Innovation Challenge Reveals Students’ Erin Draper ’03, MBA’14 wanted to help Clarkson students. In a semester when student activities and opportunities for community bonding have been in low supply, boosting the spirits of the student body seemed vital. Delivering 4,000 pizzas or putting together 4,000 care packages was not feasible. Instead, the managing
director of Clarkson Ignite turned to the mission of her program to churn the creative juices of socially distanced Golden Knights. “I got thinking about what we do from an Ignite standpoint around innovation — just trying to engage them mentally and engage them with their academic expertise and trying to be productive and fun, but also educational,” says Draper. “So we issued a challenge.” Their goal was simple: offer students a loosely academic and fun creative challenge with the potential to win attractive prizes.
DAY 1
DAY 2
22 / CLARKSON MAGAZINE
DAY 3
DAY 4
For seven days, a new student challenge activity was issued, to be completed using only items found in the students’ living quarters or that could be ordered and delivered to campus safely. Students submitted a video showing their version of the completed challenge, which was then judged by Clarkson faculty and staff. The Ignite team was hopeful their challenge would engage a couple dozen students. When the videos began rolling in, the response shattered any conceivable goal. “On Monday after we launched the first one, we all sat there and just hit refresh, refresh. Then we got to watch
