Paul College’s fifth FIRE Program in the books!

This year’s theme was Making a Meaningful Difference
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2019-2020 peer advising cohort

The fifth year of Paul College’s FIRE Program has officially finished, and it has been one for the books. Throughout the year each team worked on a grand academic challenge designed to give the students a sense of shared purpose as they worked in teams to develop a business plan tied to a current issue/problem. This year’s theme was Making a Meaningful Difference, and students were tasked with creating products or services that have a positive effect on key stakeholders within one of these five grand challenge topics: Automation, Community Health, Fast Fashion, Ocean, and Wildlife.

Each year, the FIRE Program brings these ideas to life at the URC held in Paul College. The 2020 FIRE URC was held virtually on Media Space to share posters and presentations from each of the FIRE teams. These presentations were pre-recorded (most using Zoom or PowerPoint narrations) for judges to review. All in all, sharing the hard work of our students is always a pleasure, but we were especially happy with the adaptability and resilience shown this year under these trying circumstances.

Projects in the first round were judged by 44 alum, faculty, industry professionals, and staff. The six teams working on each grand challenge topic faced off against each other hoping to be named the winner. Following the review of all rankings and feedback from judges, the winning poster presentation from each grand challenge was determined, and the winning business plan presentation from each category moved onto the final round of judging. The winning projects in each grand challenge area are below:

Automation
Business Plan
Poster
Community Health
Business Plan
Poster
Fast Fashion
Business Plan
Poster
Ocean
Business Plan
Poster
Wildlife
Business Plan
Poster

The final round was reviewed by a new set of judges and they determined the winner of this year's URC Business Plan Presentation Competition was Paul So Hard (Team 14) and their idea for Motor Meals. This team was led by senior peer advisor Valerie Mattice. In second place was 22 Jump Street (Team 22) with Green Seas, led by junior peer advisor Yanni Kakouris, and in third was Live Three or Die (Team 3) with UpCycle Fabrics, led by senior peer advisor Max Polay.

Winning teams from the FIRE URC were recognized at the FIRE Final Ceremony held via Zoom on May 4th where we also recognized the winner of the Poster Presentation Student Choice Award, Igniters, Luminary Award winners, top 10 individuals on the FIRE points leaderboard, and the winners of the 2019-2020 FIRE Program.

After a year of involvement, engagement, hard work, and logging of FIRE points, team Dirty 30, led by junior peer advisor Jared Bjornberg, took first place in the year-long game component of FIRE. In second place, after holding the top spot for most of the fall semester, was 22 Jump Street, led by junior peer advisor Yanni Kakouris. In third place was High Five, led by senior peer advisor and winner of the Paul Pride student excellence award Alana Hovey.

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Peer advisors Paul college FIRE team 4
Peer advisors Paul college FIRE team-15-at-paws-and-relax
Paul college FIRE peer advisors team-high-five
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