About Us
In spring 2018, the Department of Agricultural Education began offering its entrepreneurial leadership and innovation courses in the newly created Innovation Collaboratory. The Collaboratory, which is located in Saguaro Hall, Room 127, was created in 2018 with support from the Dorrance Scholarship Program. This unique learning space is designed to enhance the development of CALES students, faculty, and statewide stakeholders in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurial leadership. In particular, the Collaboratory is equipped with state-of-the-art collaborative learning technologies and resources that foster creativity, ingenuity, and higher order strategic thinking. In addition to hosting entrepreneurial leadership and innovation courses, the Collaboratory will support a series of faculty and student workshops aimed at increasing the entrepreneurial activities and innovative initiatives across CALES. Dr. Matthew Mars, Assistant Professor of Agricultural Leadership and Innovation, is the Founder and Academic Director of the Collaboratory and Mr. Emre Toker, CALES Innovator-in-Residence, is the Managing Director.
Scrapper's Corner
The Innovation Collaboratory produces a weekly podcast and webseries featuring Mars and Emry!
Listen to the podcast on Spotify, iTunes Apple Podcasts or Stitcher!
Watch the webseries on Youtube.
In the decades to come, Millennials and Gen-Z workers will make up much of the American workforce. With both generations being known to value collaboration over competition, as employers, they understand the importance of teamwork, and are attracted to employees that help form a culture reflective of that. As such, teamwork is one of the most sought-after skills in the workplace. It brings together colleagues with varied experiences, skills, and work histories, to in turn create a fertile ground for brainstorming, creative problem-solving, innovation, and solution-driven thinking.
ALC 409 empowers students to identify and strengthen talents through a carefully charted, practical journey in interpersonal leadership development. In this course, each student will gain the competencies and skills associated with team dynamics used to meet today’s challenges. Students will then come away with the ability to recognize team roles and responsibilities, apply persuasion and influence, manage team conflict, and exercise situational, transactional, and transformational leadership. Anchored in a semester-long service-learning project, students will actively apply, reflect, and evaluate their development of interpersonal leadership skills through project planning, coordination, execution, and presentation.
Interpersonal leadership skills are relevant to all students who aspire to work with others, lead a team, and/or an organization. Master these principles and practices, and set yourself apart amongst top employers.
This low-enrollment course fills quickly, so register through UAccess today!
The value of an entrepreneurial mindset is skyrocketing! Employers across all industries and sectors are in search of graduates with a capacity to think and act in entrepreneurial ways. Likewise, the need for entrepreneurial leaders who are equipped to develop and act on innovative solutions to the challenges that communities and our environment face has never been greater.
ALC 410 helps you develop and enhance the skills and competencies that characterize the entrepreneurial mindset: creativity, critical thinking and analysis, data-informed decision-making, innovative solution development, market and needs assessment, and strategic communication and storytelling. The course is project-based to include a range of active and collaborative learning experiences in one of the most unique settings on campus: The Innovation Collaboratory—home of the whiteboard ping-pong table!
Learning the entrepreneurial mindset and gaining entrepreneurial leadership skills is relevant to everyone, especially students who aspire to be:
- agriculturalists
- community developers
- conservationists
- educators
- engineers
- nutritionists
- physicians
- scientists
- veterinarians
- any other career path in which you want to be a leader of change and have an impact on others!
This low-enrollment course fills quickly, so register through UAccess today!
- ALC 195A: Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset
- ALC 309: Leadership Principles and Practices
- ALC 411: Principles & Applications of Organizational Innovation
- ALC 422: Communicating Knowledge in Agriculture and the Life Sciences
- ALC 497: Assessment of Early Stage Investment Opportunities in Agricultural and Life Science Innovations