Neil HarnerOn Saturday, September 28, High School seniors from throughout the region came to the Kanbar College to participate in Kanbar Scholarship Day. The all-day event, now in its 4th year, offers prospective students to the University an inside view as to what makes Jefferson different. They experience what its like to learn, the Jefferson way, through a Nexus learning project alongside Jefferson students of various majors and faculty from a wide range of professional backgrounds to design a unique product as part of the competition.
The real excitement, all participating high school students have the opportunity to earn a full-tuition scholarship to Jefferson.
This year’s competition focused on the needs of a company that designs lighting products. The challenge consisted of students acting as consultants to this manufacturer, who’s seeing increased competition as “smart” devices are on the rise, to support them in the development of a new generation of home and business lighting products. The goal, to develop a concept for an engaging, well-designed smart lamp for a 15-25 y.o. target audience.
With a completely blue-sky opportunity, the only requirements for the teams was to draw inspiration from the fictitious product’s name: “Luma” and the tagline: “Your light assistant.” Teams were to explore new technologies, forms & materials. Most importantly though, teams had to demonstrate how the product would be incorporated into the lives of the customer.
After a tremendous amount of research, ideation, abstract design & fun exercises supported by current Jefferson students and input from faculty, teams had to develop their concepts into a pitch consisting of a presentation delivered to a panel of Jefferson faculty.
The ideas, concepts & presentations were exceptional this year. Neil Harner, Program Director of the M.S. User Experience & Interaction Design program shared, “The young professionals looking to attend Jefferson definitely are showing they have the right qualities to be incredible designers, engineers or business professionals. I’m excited to see some of them here next year.”
You could see by the end of the day, students were excited and ready to take on the next stage. Although all students received tremendous feedback and hopefully made some new friendships along the way, the real competition is underway.
Individuals from the teams have until October 28 to submit a follow up assignment which will be an essential part of the scholarship competition and will be used along with the teams’ already submitted work to award a single student a scholarship to Jefferson.
Good luck to everyone participating in the competition!
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