If creative thinking is required, students who have taken the Design Process class at Texas A&M University can be counted on to come up with great ideas.
The class, known in the catalog as ENDS 101, is offered through the university’s College of Architecture. Taught by Rodney Hill and Jorge Vanegas, professors of architecture, enrolled or previously enrolled students nabbed many of the top awards in two campus contests in the spring 2008 semester. Vanegas is now the college’s interim dean.
In the Aggie Innovention contest, Design Process students nabbed four of the top six awards.
“The purpose of this contest,” said the competition’s website, “is to find an Aggie Innoventor who, through the use of creativity and innovation, crafts an idea that—when developed—will solve a problem related to campus life and/or university attendance. “
The annual contest is sponsored by the Institute for Applied Creativity at Texas A&M and the American Creativity Association’s student chapter.
Design Process class students Katie Gajdica, Brian Crawford, Claire Hazelbaker and Scott Seely turned in prize-winning ideas.
Gajdica, looking to find a way to avoid stumbling around in a dark apartment at night on books, half-eaten pizzas, or sleeping roommates, imagined a new kind of bedroom slipper.
Both slippers have lights in them, making it easy to spot any of the aforementioned “road hazards” or other unknowns lurking on the floor of a college residence.
Claire Hazelbaker came up with an idea born from the periodic occurrences of campus shootings.
It’s a three-ring bulletproof binder, large enough to cover one’s head and torso, but small enough to fit in a backpack.
Hazelbaker’s binder is, on the one hand, a standard 3-ring binder that holds 8 ½ by 11- inch paper, but it’s reinforced by carbon fiber reinforced plastic. Hazelbaker said research by chemist Ray Maughman at the University of Texas at Dallas shows the plastic is 17 times tougher than Kevlar, which is used in bulletproof vests.
Many of the winners in the seventh annual Ideas Challenge in spring 2008, hosted by Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School, were also students of Rodney Hill and Jorge Vanegas in the ENDS 101 class.
Each year, architecture students grab many of the top spots in the challenge, in which students have a chance to present new products and services to a jury of successful members of the business and academic world.
Dylan Dacy, who took the contest’s second place award, was in the design process class in the spring 2008 semester. His idea was called “The Car Compass.”
Seven third-place awards were distributed, and three of those were former Design Process class students.
A team consisting of Anna Gorski, Blake Cannon, Britton Clay, Casey Branach, Hannah DeGray and Melissa Kelso, who took the class in spring 2008, won third-place honors with their “Classic Comfort” entry.
Jenny Casmus and Michael Kim, who took the ENDS 101 class last fall, scored a third-place award with their “Digital Scaling Ruler”.
Cody Sanderson also received third place honors for his “MusicCrawler” entry. He took ENDS 101 in spring 2008.
