Three dozen students spent a Saturday in January brainstorming and developing possible solutions to sustainability challenges in an event hosted by the Ratcliffe Eco-Entrepreneurship Fellows program at the University of Delaware (REEF@UD). Winning proposals ranged from creating biodiesel out of food waste to filtering microplastics from washing machines.

Students from majors across the University, as well as a few students from the Charter School of Wilmington, chose one of three tracks at the start of the day: low-carbon transportation alternatives, reducing consumption and waste, or improving buildings’ resilience to flooding. Each track gave students a problem statement provided by the days’ sponsors: the Gerard J. Mangone Climate Change Science and Policy Hub, the Delaware Solid Waste Authority (DSWA) and Horn Entrepreneurship.

After dividing up into the tracks, the students formed teams of two to four people and worked through an entrepreneurial process of 1) understanding a problem, 2) imagining solutions, 3) iterating a particular possible solution and 4) creating a pitch for judges at the end of the day. Each track had judges working in areas related to the problem, including a planner from the city of Newark, an engineer from the Delaware Department of Transportation, two officials from DSWA and UD faculty.

Charter School of Wilmington sophomores Micah Dulos and Isheta Kulshreshtha said the expertise of the judges challenged them to do more research on their biodiesel idea, which ended up winning the low-carbon transportation track, but in the end, both agreed that the feedback was valuable and inspiring because of the people who delivered it.

“At first we thought it was kind of intimidating,” Dulos said. “Then I saw it as an opportunity to test it in a professional setting.”

Kulshreshtha said she would like to continue to develop their idea using the judges’ feedback, and while the day, known as a Switch Pitch and Innovation Sprint, stood on its own, organizers hoped students would react as she did.

While judges deliberated, REEF@UD Director David Lawson shared with the participants that they could get help continuing to develop entrepreneurial solutions to environmental problems in the class he teaches as the core of the REEF@UD program, the Eco-Entrepreneurship Practicum, offered this spring. (In addition to serving as an adjunct professor and leading REEF@UD, Lawson is working on a start-up business himself, CH4 Global, which aims to reduce methane emissions from livestock.)

Developing a mindset

But whether students will be continuing on in Eco-Entrepreneurship or not, Horn Entrepreneurship Director Dan Freeman said all of the participants in the Switch Pitch and Innovation Sprint got the benefit of learning and practicing entrepreneurial thinking.

“For the students, it is an opportunity to engage in real-world, creative problem-solving. It at least allows them to discover whether this is something they’re interested in,” Freeman said. “When you think about the core of entrepreneurship education, it is helping to develop the mindset, the skill sets and access to resources so people can engage in creative problem-solving when they notice problems and are predisposed to do that. It is giving people efficacy and agency to engage problems. Entrepreneurship education is about much more than just starting new businesses.”

Since the event was held on a Saturday during Winter Session and conducted virtually, students could participate from anywhere. In addition to students signing on from Newark, participants came from England, India and Singapore. Most were not entrepreneurship majors. Freeman said the focus was on recruiting students with an environmental interest and helping them develop entrepreneurial tools. And though it’s still too early to be sure, both Freeman and Lawson said they hoped the Switch Pitch and Innovation Sprint would be back during next Winter Session for the unique opportunity it offers students.

At the end of the day, following pitches of a total of 13 proposals, winners and runners-up were selected for each track. Students on the winning teams split $1,000 in prize money, and runners up split $500. Everyone who completed the entire day received a $25 gift card.

While not all ideas from the Switch Pitch and Innovation Sprint will go on to be developed further, the judges in all three tracks emphasized how impressed they were by the students’ thinking. The two winners in the reducing consumption and waste category are variations of efforts already underway in some form, and all three tracks will continue to provide fertile ground for innovative solutions in future years.

“Today kicks off a year of the Climate Change Hub at UD working on this challenge of low-carbon transportation alternatives that we hope will help the state reach its goals [from the Delaware Climate Action Plan],” said Jules Bruck, co-director of the Climate Change Hub. She shared with the students in her track that the approach they were taking is a promising one. “Our most innovative ideas come when we work together, particularly with people with different backgrounds and different majors and therefore different ideas.”

Switch Pitch and Innovation Sprint Winners

Track 1 — Low-Carbon Transportation Alternatives

Winner: Biodiesel from Food Waste — Micah Dulos and Isheta Kulshreshtha

Runner-Up: Delaware Electric Auto Train System — Brice Carlson, Badri Patel and Samay Shah

Track 2 — Reducing Waste and Consumption

Winner: Reducing Microplastics from Laundry — Alyssa Wentzel, Hunter Wills, Sierra RyanWallick and Neha Veeragandham

Runner-up — Chemical Breakdown for Fabric for Reuse — Hannah Bockius and Lauren Bulger

Track 3 — Protection of Buildings from Flooding

Winner – Neoprene Rain Bomb Quick Reaction – Ben Quinutolo and Laura Weinstein

Runner Up – High Frequency Flooding - Carolina Cassel Dürr, Delaney Pilotte and Lexi Dart