Luddy ALIGN Bloomington | Indianapolis  is an initiative that is working to support both the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses. ALIGN is an acronym derived from Applied + Leadership + Industry + Government + Networking; they collectively represent the dimensions of experiential education as we are defining it within the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. In addition, ALIGN encompasses cross-curricular educational programming, specifically community engaged learning and student innovation and entrepreneurship. Our primary mission is to streamline and strengthen external engagement for the purpose of increasing experiential learning opportunities for Luddy students. Given that ALIGN works closely with our Career Services and Development teams, our goal is to also facilitate the preparation of our students for gainful, sustainable employment and the engagement of our alumni to deepen their involvement with the success of the Luddy School. 

After discussing ideas for how to best showcase the opportunities students are given in the school, we landed on the production of a report, instead of a newsletter. We are hoping this report can be an aggregate featurette of all the departments and programs holding space for students to gain this vital real-world experience. This report will also be helpful in conversations with the rest of the campus to taut our incredible faculty and initiatives that the Luddy School is giving our students. 

The following report is a compilation of offerings the Luddy School has been championing on behalf of our students in the academic year 2022-2023. 

If ALIGN can be of assistance, you can reach us at ALIGN@iu.edu. We look forward to collaborating with all of our stakeholders.

The Luddy Student Ambassador program provides select Luddy students with the opportunity to join a community, gain personal and professional skills, and support Luddy while serving the undergraduate recruitment team. Luddy Ambassadors develop skills in professionalism, public speaking, networking, and leadership. Ambassadors present to or speak one-on-one with prospective Luddy undergraduate students and their families at our daily information sessions, greater IU-sponsored events, college fairs, and high school classes about their majors, career opportunities, and student experiences at IU and Luddy.

The Luddy Student Ambassador program typically consists of 25-30 current Luddy undergraduate students, sophomores through seniors. As seniors graduate and specific needs in the group shift, we seek out enthusiastic new members late in the fall semester, who undergo onboarding training during the spring, to join the team the following fall. Freshmen, sophomores, and juniors are welcome to apply each fall.

Serve IT offers students the opportunity to use credit hours to put the skills they are learning in school into action with real clients from the local nonprofit community. Students are placed in teams according to interest and skill, and can return semester after semester, building a portfolio that
demonstrates both skill and civic-mindedness through service. In addition to the specific skills involved in each real-world
project, students develop skills that include professional
communications, client, project, and team management—all very difficult to teach in a traditional classroom.

Serve IT has around 100 students per semester, and requires a competitive application process. We turn down around 60-70 applications per semester.

Teams

UX Design, Web Design, Accessibility, User Testing, Security, Tech Lessons for youth, Tech Consulting for Seniors

Programming

Capstone, Community Engaged Learning, Career
Development, Industry Mentors, Professional Networking

Impact

Serve IT’s students have completed over 300 projects, worth a value of $5.6 million dollars. (Serve IT’s work is always free.)

GT-IDEA is an interdisciplinary institute that spans Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, and O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. 

The initiative is made possible through a multi-year gift provided by Grant Thornton. With a focus on assessing risk both in terms of service delivery exposure and/or client risk, the mission of GT-IDEA is to leverage disruptive technology and unlock innovation in the market by integrating leading-edge technology with business and policy.

Programming

The three host schools each hold a case competition throughout the year, as well as host two roundtables. In addition, a webinar to feature faculty research is hosted each semester.

Impact

The partnership is beginning its fifth year, and during that time, Kelley, Luddy, and O’Neill students have been provided regular opportunities to work on cross-disciplinary teams while benefitting from the mentorship provided by experienced professionals from Grant Thornton.

Students from the three host schools are afforded the opportunity to attend six roundtables over the course of the year, along with participating in case competitions hosted each semester.

The Shoemaker Innovation Center is a university-wide, student-focused center which supports innovation and entrepreneurship and hosts regular talks by experienced technology innovators and entrepreneurs. The Shoebox is a student startup incubator which houses 30 startup teams comprised of students from across the IU Bloomington campus. While the Shoebox accommodates 30 startup teams at any given time, it supports the development of over 100 startups annually using a rolling application process, as well as providing guidance to all startup teams, irrespective of their direct participation as a Shoebox client.

Teams

Examples of startup concepts currently being developed through the Shoebox are an artificial intelligence (AI) based large language model to automate the employee interview process and a B2B platform for purchasing, managing, and retiring on-chain carbon offsets.

Programming

Weekly Client Standups, Guest Talks, Ice Miller Startup Law Advisory Sessions, Elevate Ventures Capital Counseling Sessions, Shoebox Scholarship Program, Shoebox Fund.

Impact

Since its launch in 2018, the Shoebox has incubated over 200 startups, as well as counseled several hundred additional startup teams. In addition to weekly Client Standups, the Shoebox clients are required to participate in the Shoecase, an annual showcase of what they have achieved through the program.

In addition to weekly Client Standups, the Shoebox clients are required to participate in the Shoecase, an annual showcase of what they have achieved through the program.

Dr. David Wild teaches Data Science in Practice at Bloomington, where students are organized into teams to carry out real world projects in conjunction with project sponsors, while learning about methodologies for data science consulting.  This course is primarily open to Data Science MS students, but other Luddy graduate students are encouraged to enroll.

The Spring 2023 semester provided 30 students with 16 experiential learning data science projects from a variety of sponsors, such as Astra Vision, producing computer vision models to identify disease in x-rays and other signal technologies, and the City of Bloomington, analyzing their data on innovation projects.

CTIL internally sponsored 6 projects with teams of 5 students in both Fall 2022 and Spring 2023: (1) analyzing the East Palestine train derailment and its relation to medicine in a disaster environment ,(2)creating topic communities and identifying luminaries in various domains through analyzing social media networks, (3) producing a knowledge graph for disaster data, (4) improving disaster resilience by identifying resource distributions to impacted counties, (5) developing an improved model to find the true cost of wildland fires, and (6) understanding large language models (ChatGPT) and researching use cases for use in crisis environments.