EntrepreneurshipResearch & Discovery
The summer pilot program for first-year Huskies succeeded as an archetype for experiential learning opportunities
The UConn Tech Park, student participants, and industry partners didn’t know quite what to expect from the Talent Incubator that was piloted over the summer. In this program, first-year Huskies – not seniors or graduate students – would be challenged with real-world problems from major Connecticut companies, testing their mettle, knowledge, and creativity.
Now the question is not whether the Incubator was a success, but how to maximize it moving forward to bring more students and companies into the fray.
The Tech Park created the program to identify talented students early in their academic careers and help guide them toward rewarding vocations. Concurrently, the Incubator offered companies a change to differentiate between candidates to see how they performed in given tasks, projects, and scenarios.
Companies involved some of Connecticut’s key industries, including finance, security, and sustainability, with students completing 100 hours exploring different challenges. Trane, an energy services and HVAC leader, was one of those companies, selecting a team of UConn students Marcus Doherty ’29 (ENG) and Alexander Casper ’29 (ENG).
“As we all know, college students often have the dilemma of ‘how do I get experience when I have no experience to begin with?,’” says Doherty. “This was an excellent way for me to get my first real-world experience with a company in a field related to what I was studying.”
Trane gave the students some freedom to explore projects that would be meaningful. In the process, the latter got a taste of careers as environmental engineers, which Doherty says is now a field he’s like to pursue.
“As a freshman, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of ownership that was given to us throughout these projects,” Doherty says. “These were not just predefined projects with straightforward objectives our mentors laid out for us. Instead, we had a lot of freedom to shape what the project became.”
Working with Trane, the students established a project to reduce carbon emissions at UConn Storrs, aligning with a University goal of reduced carbon footprint. Doherty and Casper conducted energy audits on eight buildings, identifying HVAC upgrades that could make the structures more carbon-efficient. They presented their findings to their company as well as to UConn College of Engineering faculty, identifying conservation protocols that could reduce carbon emissions by more than 7%.
Chris Jones, Trane’s Energy Services Sales Leader for the Northeast, supervised Doherty and Casper. Jones says the Talent Incubator connected the company with UConn to provide meaningful experiences and appreciates that the program is reserved for first-year students, presenting them with the choice of continuing or turning away from given career paths.
“We feel very adamant about taking what we do and creating great experiential learn opportunities for students,” says Jones.
Critically important, Jones continues, are the on-the-job soft skills that the students are learning now, especially as artificial intelligence continues to advance. Traits like empathy, reading people, personal interaction – these are strictly human talents that computers cannot replicate.
“In the world of AI, soft skills are infinitely more important than ever before,” Jones says. “They were always important, but those will be the most resilient skills for kids to have as they enter the workforce.”
The Trane team was rewarded for its efforts with more than just a stipend and experience. On Sept. 9, all the Talent Incubator students presented on their projects during an event held at the Innovation Partnership Building at the UConn Tech Park. The industry partners voted for the best presentations, awarding top prize of $1,000 to Doherty and Casper.
The student teams, host companies, and the Tech Park agreed that the Talent Incubator should continue and grow from a successful pilot. Preliminary plans include bringing more companies on board from different industries, as well as opening the candidate pool to students outside of the College of Engineering. That way, the program becomes more multidisciplinary, reflecting the skillsets and knowledge of Connecticut’s workforce.
“We are thrilled that our Talent Incubator was a success for both the students involved and the companies that provided those students with great opportunities to prove their skills, creativity, and knowledge,” says Emmanouil Anagnoustou, executive director of the Tech Park. “Student research and application is a major part of the UConn undergraduate experience and we are excited that this program is set to offer first year students the chances to make important connections with the companies and industries that proliferate in Connecticut.”
The following companies participated in the Tech Park Talent Incubator:
- AvanGrid
- Casella
- Eversource
- Hyaxiom
- Sikorsky
- Synchrony
- Tescan
- Trane
- Travelers
