Dawg Camp Innovate builds foundation for community of problem solvers
It’s July in Georgia. It’s hot. You have your dog in the car, but you want to run into the gas station to grab a bag of chips.
What do you do?
Dawg Camp Innovate students were up for the challenge. The incoming University of Georgia freshmen pitched a collapsible cooling fan that folds out of the car’s floorboard, a dog vest with cool water tubes to chill your pup, and a super-cooled seat cover that uses a chemical reaction to produce cold on-demand.
“It’s fun to learn how to think on your feet and in a different way,” said incoming freshman Maren Misiaszek, as she and her team refined an idea for a wearable cooling device for dogs.
A week ago, she never heard of design thinking. But this week, she’s using the process to develop an idea for a product that could protect the pets’ lives — and she got a head start meeting the students in her dorm. This fall she’ll live at “The Launch Pad” — an entrepreneurship affinity residence hall set up in 2018.
Dawg Camp Innovate, an extended orientation program for UGA first-year students, introduces them to design thinking concepts, faculty members and the facilities supporting UGA’s Entrepreneurship Program and the UGA Innovation District.
