Monday, July 29, 2019

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• Alumni to incubate business in Henry VIII's former home
• Handmade with Love provides gifts to grad students

Alumni to incubate business in Henry VIII's former home

Devon Copeland, David Ferris, Mitchell Catoen, and Rareș Topor-Gosman are participating in the Hult Prize Startup Accelerator in the UK.

This is an excerpt of an article published in Waterloo Stories.

In what could have a fairy-tale ending, four recent engineering alumni are advancing their school project at the Hult Prize Startup Accelerator located in a 16^th century English castle.

Devon Copeland, David Ferris, Mitchell Catoen, and Rareș Topor-Gosman, who all graduated from mechatronics engineering this spring, are spending five weeks this summer at the breathtaking Ashridge country estate, located in an idyllic little town just outside of London.

They’re one of 40 teams from around the world that is staying in Henry the VIII’s former residence while going through a rigorous curriculum to transform ideas into viable companies in the Hult Prize challenge, the world’s largest student social entrepreneurship competition. 

The top six teams from the summer program will move on to the Hult final round this September at the United Nations in New York City for the chance to win $1 million and mentorship from the international business community. Two years ago Epoch, a University of Waterloo team that developed a mobile marketplace to better connect refugees to the community, made it into the last round.

The project the four new Waterloo graduates have taken to this year’s Hult startup accelerator is called Better Bail for America (BB4A), a solution to help prevent youth unemployment in the United States by enabling young, employed, first-time offenders on minor charges to access crowdfunded, interest-free bail.

“We want to help youth keep their employment opportunities and not find themselves in a downward cycle,” says Copeland. “If you are stuck in jail on bail, you’ll most certainly lose your job because you’ll be missing days, weeks or even months of work before trial.”

Even if first-time offenders are able to get out of jail, they often take a plea deal that usually results in a criminal record, explains Copeland. 

“We’re really looking forward to the mentorship we will receive, particularly around the business and legal aspects,” says Copeland. “There’s a lot of expertise in this castle incubator to help us out.”

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Read the full story.

Handmade with Love provides gifts to grad students

This article is part of an on-going Campus Wellness Champions series.

Staff in Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) have been busy crocheting and knitting for future Warriors after launching the Handmade with Love program. Graduate students who are recipients of the parental leave bursary are offered a handmade gift, which could be a baby blanket, booties, or a hat, from a staff member. It all started when a staff member in the GSPA taught herself to crochet and needed an outlet for her finished works, and has expanded. The GSPA now takes donations of handmade items from staff across campus.

We chatted with Miranda Bilotta, who is the Manager of Graduate Financial Aid and Awards Programs to find out more. “It’s about the personal touch, to let students know that we are here for them in their academic career, but that we also value their life outside of graduate studies,” she says. Handmade with Love recognizes that many graduate students are international students or live away from their traditional support networks. “The program recognizes that becoming a parent or growing your family is such a big moment in an individual’s life.” Miranda points out that the program makes their office more welcoming and open, so that students know they can talk to GSPA staff about anything they are going through.

The students who receive items from the Handmade with Love program are recipients of the parental leave bursary and often later receive the daycare bursary, also offered through GSPA.  Many of them say without theses bursaries they would have had to choose between being a parent or being a student. The handmade items add to that feeling of excitement and gratitude the students feel for being able to have both.

When we asked Miranda what she hopes is the long- term impact of the program, she says she “hopes that it inspires more of us to look at students beyond their ID number. Students are people beyond their academic life, with challenges and milestones just like anyone else and we should take time to celebrate everyone’s happy moments!”