CIE Advisory Board/Mentor Program

At the beginning of the 2019 semester Raja met with me to talk about possible development of mentors for the business pitch, a competition of students to present business ideas or products to people from the industry.
I mentored two students in the development of branding and understanding how to promote their products online. This was really a great experience for me since I really missed doing the startup weekends with the students. I got a chance to bring the students into my creative design class and have them see what branding a company was all about. They got to speak with other design students and found out that branding is not just developing a logo, but developing a mission that you believe in. One of the biggest challenges in the classroom is teaching design students that just because someone wants a logo or website, it really isn’t what makes the company grow. I teach the students to recognize that it’s more than just a design, and that you need to research and immerse yourself in the company in order to get the feel of what they are after with their specific clientele . These two students also got the opportunity to have my creative design class help them develop logos and branding to support their presentations at the end of the semester.