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Campus banners showcase innovative SU students, promote IDEA campaign

When students returned to campus after Winter Break, they encountered both a new semester and new outdoor decor.

The Friday before spring semester classes began, 29 banners featuring students from eight of Syracuse University’s schools and colleges, as well as the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, were hung up on Main and South campuses, said Bruce Kingma, associate provost for entrepreneurship and innovation at SU.

The idea for the project developed as a way to showcase several talented and innovative SU students, Kingma said. The banners will remain around campus until commencement in May.

The banners also promote the Raymond von Dran Innovation and Disruptive Entrepreneurship Accelerator campaign, also known as IDEA, according to the IDEA website. The campaign was designed to help students further their distinctive ideas about how to contribute to economic growth and start both profit and nonprofit ventures in the area.

To make these banners possible, both male and female student entrepreneurs from each school were contacted to promote IDEA.  Due to the limited window of time for photo shoots, some students were unable to participate. But the team is still proud of the academic diversity it was able to display, Kingma said.



The project started last year when Kingma wanted to create a campaign to promote student entrepreneurship, said Chelsea Orcutt, an alumna of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications who worked with Kingma on the project.

Kingma worked with a team, including Orcutt; Nicci Brown, SU’s vice president of marketing and communications; Stacey Keefe, executive director of Enitiative; and Ursula McCarthy, creative director, to determine the most effective way to expose and highlight the university’s pioneering students and their ventures, Kingma said.

One of the main points the team wanted to emphasize was that students do not have to be business majors to receive help to carry out their projects, Keefe said. Assistance is available to those who have majors in any of the university’s colleges, she said.

The easiest way to get involved, Orcutt said, is to visit the IDEA website and get in contact with the team to learn what to do to get a developing project going.





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