The IE Mission
IE provides undergraduates with the resources to discover their passion, purpose and project their graduate study path. Take ownership of your education experience by joining the program.
Communication Sciences and Disorders Pre Grad Intern Leah Arnell
“When I began the IE internship I was a good student but I wasn’t an active student. After my experience with IE I feel more confident to approach professors and graduate students. I also feel more confident in my academic abilities. In my IE assignments I have worked more diligently and accurately than I knew possible. In my creating and presentation of a poster at the Longhorn Research Bazaar, I developed academic reasoning skills that I didn’t know I had. I definitely feel more qualified and prepared for entry into graduate school.”
Mechanical Engineering Pre Grad Intern Arnav Chhabra
“Being a part of the IE Pre Grad Internship made me realize how much research actually fascinates me. Before I entered this program, I was not sure of what I wanted to do. In fact, I was almost sure that graduate school was not the right path for me. Now it is clear to me that being a prestigious researcher is and will be the main academic focus of the rest of my life. Presenting at one of the most renowned conferences and being one of the youngest people there to do so created that confidence in me which will help through my entire academic life. Being a pioneer in Biotechnology is my main goal and Intellectual Entrepreneurship has helped me be on the right path for that end goal.”
Law Pre-Grad Intern Joseph Gallardo
“To say the Intellectual Entrepreneurship internship was an amazing experience for me would be such an understatement. I came across this opportunity at such an ideal time in my life. I’ve always been very interested in pursuing Law, but not everyone agrees; the Intellectual Entrepreneurship program provided enough insight for me to know that, despite the opinions of others, Law is in fact what I want to do and there are no doubts about it.”
Philosophy Pre Grad Intern Sophia Poitier
“One of the main ‘take aways’ that I have gotten from the IE experience is to be assertive when it comes to your field of study. The IE program has given me the confidence to go beyond the minimum requirements and reach out to others in the department. I discovered that this is how you really get involved in your field because it is the only way people know that you are serious. I have also been able to lay some worries to rest since I have been involved with IE. After seeing what grad classes are like and talking with professors and grad students, I feel as if I have a handle on the graduate school world.”
Entrepreneurship in Science and in the Arts
As a college student, you are now living in a time of unprecedented challenges and opportunity, hence the term “Generation Flux”. This seminar is designed to help you to become an intellectual entrepreneur—to understand these challenges and opportunities, why this makes your education in the natural sciences even more valuable, and show you how to build a workable plan for doing what you care about, making a difference, and making a living so you can keep doing it.
The course draws from design, business, and community change to give you a set of concepts and practical tools to help you:
- Identify or articulate something you care about and are motivated to pursue – a vision and mission
- Give that vision, a particular form as an idea or a “product”
- Create an action plan that finds a “market” for your idea, a way to sustain pursuing it, and sequence of doable steps you can follow (“business” model + project plan).
- Actively engage people they don’t know about your idea and your plan, so you can build support and resources for what you want to accomplish.
The seminar is run as a series of workshops, so that in addition to learning concepts and tools, you will also be able to work on your plan in the seminar, with the help of your classmates. The primary work for the seminar, in addition to building a plan, is talking about your ideas and your plan to as many different people as you can and then using their feedback to continually modify your plan through the semester. The course also emphasizes how building a plan and actively exploring the many ways you can be valuable in the world makes you a better student, scientist, and practitioner.