The grass does not grow beneath MSOE’s University Innovation Fellows’ feet. In just one year, the first cohort of Fellows made their way around the country gathering experience and inspiration for making meaningful change on MSOE’s campus.  

Their latest travels took them to the South by Southwest Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas in March where they engaged with more than 600 people through six “stokes,” which are activities to help teams loosen up and become mentally and physically active. They also collaborated with Fellows from other universities.  

“The four of us jumped on stage before our first event, with the speaker’s permission of course, and engaged the crowd of 150+ people in the classic 1-2-3 stoke,” said Sabrina Stangler, a junior majoring in software engineering. “We continued throughout the week as a band of 16 fellows jumping on every opportunity we could find to engage a crowd, alleviate some waiting discomfort and help people all across the world empathize through guided networking activities before the start of the headlining acts.”  

“In addition to being agents of change, we attended a slew of events each day that opened our eyes to powerful insights with regard to diversity, leadership, empathy, creativity and emerging technologies,” Stangler continued. “We’re excited to bring everything we learned from the sessions and conversations with other Fellows back to MSOE. SXSW truly embodied the startup and entrepreneurial culture. Seeing the joy and appreciation from both the speakers and audience perspective gives us excitement to further pursue change on our campus and the surrounding Milwaukee community.”  

Follow the Fellows’ activities on their Facebook and Instagram accounts.