Harvard Business School, SEAS, and FAS Launch New Fellowship for Undergrads

The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in collaboration with the Harvard Business School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is launching a new Technology Innovation Fellowship Program available to all current juniors interested in solving problems and building skills in entrepreneurship.

According to the HBS co-chair of the fellowship program, Business School Professor Thomas R. Eisenmann ’79, the desire to increase connections between HBS and undergraduates prompted administrators to create this opportunity.

“If you go back historically, there wasn’t a lot of interaction between the College and the Business School,” Eisenmann said.

The collaboration is “a perfect example of what we can achieve with a ‘One Harvard’ approach,” Computer Science Professor Hanspeter Pfister, SEAS co-chair of the program, wrote in an emailed statement. “One Harvard” refers to an effort former University President Drew G. Faust began to bridge Harvard’s schools, which have historically operated relatively independently.

“The program complements the mission of Harvard College and its particular focus to ‘educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society,’” Pfister wrote. “We believe students who are grounded in the liberal arts, skilled in technology development, and trained in innovative and problem-solving techniques, will go on to become impactful and positive global citizens.”

Pfister wrote that he hopes students will gain “a wide variety of knowledge – everything from the skills needed to succeed as an early-stage entrepreneur to exploring topics such as the societal and ethical implications of technology.”

Students admitted to the fellowship program can expect to participate in a variety of activities geared toward enhancing their skills and their understandings of technology and innovation throughout the spring of their junior year and fall of their senior year.

Fellows will have the opportunity to engage in an HBS Bootcamp, which Eisenmann said involves “a mix of learning-by-doing exercises and speakers, and then studio time for the teams in the afternoon.”

Following the bootcamp, fellows will attend a two-day business and innovation fundamentals program and seminars featuring “alumni entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, faculty members from different parts of the University,” according to Eisenmann.

In the summer between their junior and senior years, fellows will have the option to either intern at a technology company or work on their own startup idea with financial support from the program.

The fellowship program will culminate in an event for incoming fellows and current fellows to showcase students’ work.

Pfister wrote the ultimate goal of the program is “to create a cohort that is excited about the challenges and rewards of innovation and entrepreneurship.”

“We want to equip the fellows with the skills to figure out if they’ve got a good idea, a good solution,” Eisenmann said. “We want to give them the full set of business skills to take an innovator and prepare them to make their vision real.”

The application for the Technology Innovation Fellowship Program opens Dec. 3 and closes Jan. 3, 2019. Decisions will be released in late January.