The Student Innovation Centre of Iowa State University has begun a new recruiting program led by the Innovation Fellows Program and the Office of Admissions .
Admission counsellors sought new ways to connect with international students in 2020 and conducted virtual recruitment fairs in which hundreds of universities were featured. Some students left their video cameras off during presentations, thus, making it difficult to establish a personal connection.
A virtual international program named Innovation Fellows-in-Training was developed in 2020 in which students of high schools around the world were given an opportunity to participate in themed innovation competitions and learn more about entrepreneurship and innovation.
Nearly 1200 students enrolled themselves in the first year and to date, students have been participating from 26 countries in the I-FiT challenge in which each challenge consisted of a themed workshop led by ISU faculty and students.
The applications from international freshmen are at a historically high level. High schoolers were given the prompt to design the school of the future future and student teams presented their ideas and received feedback from ISU faculty virtually and on-site.
