Art students at the University of Minnesota had the chance to show off their work at the first university student independent film festival on Thursday.

The festival was hosted by Maeve Jackson, a first-year MFA candidate in the art program at the university. During the semester, Jackson proposed the festival as her final project.

Jackson has worked at the Milwaukee Film Festival for 10 years and wanted to bring her experience to create a university-level event.

Through conversations with her advisor, Graeme Stout, Jackson learned there were larger film festivals open to the student body, but Jackson wanted the festival to be one where art students could show each other their projects outside the classroom.

Student Max Reynolds helped Jackson, who said Reynolds saw the value in an art-focused, expressive film festival rather than a more commercial one.

Jackson hoped the festival audience would get to experience something new.

“A lot of staff and faculty and other students maybe see students grabbing their gear and getting ready to make something, but they don’t always witness the making and the final product,” Johnson said.

Modeled after the Milwaukee festival, Jackson planned the festival to also include a question and answer session with the student filmmakers, a viewing party of the 13 films and awards. Jackson said the awards are fun and playful, based on each student’s film and the emotions she had after watching them herself.

“It’s just sort of a fun, playful way to get feedback and have the filmmakers feel like their work is being recognized from someone who took the time to really sit and watch these a few times,” Jackson said.

The festival serves as a way for young filmmakers to get a feel for what submitting a film outside of the university is like, Jackson said. One such filmmaker was senior Stella Stockton.

Stockton’s film, “Good Grief,” is a collection of footage taken over a couple of months, including a trip to the beach in the south of France she said she found beautiful. Over the footage, Stockton incorporated voice notes of her family telling stories about her grandma after she died.

While Stockton said it feels more like a video to her than a film, she enjoyed the challenge of piecing together footage from beautiful places from her travels. She said the film took on a deeper meaning after adding the voice notes.

“I kind of derived a meaning from those two things working together about how grief lives in the background of even the really good moments,” Stockton said. “It’s not necessarily heavy, but it’s just it, it is in the slow moments and in the fast moments.”

The festival was a chance for Stockton to get to look at art with her peers, which she said is an experience she loves. Since a young age, she has been making videos and feels drawn to making the work.

“I just love the medium,” Stockton said. “It feels like an inexplicable thing, I just feel drawn to making work and it does feel important to make videos and make films. But I don’t think that’s why I do it, I think I just do it because I have this urge to.”

The University of Minnesota’s Liberal Arts Engagement Hub in the College of Liberal Arts works to foster ethical and meaningful collaborations with disabled communities through their workshop, Inclusive Engagement: Partnering with the Disability Community, from April 28 to May 5.

The Hub seeks to facilitate reciprocal and trusting partnerships between scholars in the liberal arts and the community to respond to social challenges. Their mission is to strive to bring people together to create a hopeful future and do so through their workshops and residency program.

New this year, the workshop is held asynchronously to accommodate a larger audience of students, staff and faculty. It is part of a larger workshop through the Hub’s Collaborative Learning For Change workshop series.

Workshop participants learn how to address common accessibility barriers, access resources on digital accessibility and gain a sense of how to foster worthwhile partnerships with disability communities.

Jessica Cooley, guest curator at the Hub, helped put the workshop together with the help of the Hub’s graduate research assistant Xun Yu. As someone with a disability, Cooley said she believes it is critical to talk about accessibility and have ethical conversations with the disabled community.

“The workshop is to kind of help University folks rethink how that engagement could work in order to create these more like reciprocal and ethical relationships between the University partners and community partners,” Cooley said.

During the workshop, participants have the opportunity to reflect on why they think it is important to engage with the disability community and how to do so.

The workshop instructs faculty and staff on how to draft emails to potential disability community partners and provide resources for disabled students.

Cooley said she thinks there are great resources at the University on basic things like creating an accessible PDF and what font size to use, but those resources do not necessarily cause change in the community.

“How do we do this work from a place of disability justice, where we’re creating more of a transformative experience,” Cooley said. “Where we are thinking deeply about what it means to be in community, specifically between the university and with the disabled community.”

Yu, the Hub’s graduate research assistant, said inclusive engagement is a project the Hub has been working on for two years. Cooley said Yu has been the driving force behind the hands-on aspects of the workshop.

The third activity will be larger, Yu said, and will be for the participants to create an action plan from everything they learned in the workshop, to starting to reach out to people. 

Yu said she knows there are barriers for people with disabilities at the University, and it is important to think about how the University can welcome people with disabilities.  

“I think a lot of people in the University want to do that and have really good intentions, and probably what they are looking for is a way to actually do things in the right way,” Yu said. 

At this moment, Cooley said disability justice and inclusion are particularly important for everyone to care about. 

“Because if we ourselves are not disabled, we certainly know folks who are,” Cooley said. “And if we are fortunate enough to live long enough, we will ourselves experience the disability experience.”

Students in the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management are creating a plan to rebrand and revitalize Dinkytown in the hopes of highlighting the University’s deep ties to the neighborhood. 

Through their work in Carlson’s Impact Lab, a class where students learn business skills and how to apply these skills to a problem with a client, the group started to work on creating a compelling identity for Dinkytown. 

Tina Erazmus, director of Local Government and Community Relations for the University, works directly with students on the project. 

On May 7, the group will present its work to community members at Bringing the U to Community, an event at the University of Minnesota Safety Center, which Erazmus organizes quarterly. 

The event aims to bring in community members, neighborhood board members and executives and the University’s Good Neighbor Fund, which gives out grants to implement projects that better the neighborhood community. 

Erazmus said she wanted to highlight the students’ work through the event because it affects neighborhoods, businesses and community members.  

Group member Tejal Narkhede said one of the main goals for the project was to build a vibrant community and see Dinkytown flourish again, especially during the summer months. The group hopes to achieve this with the help of a website and social media, which they have been working on. 

“We really want to see Dinkytown flourish and get back to where it was before,” Narkhede said. “We want to get more people into Dinkytown and just kind of bring back a lot of the culture and people, especially during the summertime.” 

Ethan Mus, another group member, said he remembers Dinkytown as an exciting place to go before sport events, but the neighborhood just does not have the same “wow-factor” as it used to. 

“Dinkytown really hasn’t had any sort of revitalization, any kind of like energy around it to bring the community together,” Mus said. “It’s been looked at in the last couple of years as kind of being not the best area, not attracting a lot of visitors.” 

Narkhede said a lot of that has to do with rising crime rates, which gives the neighborhood a negative image. 

Even as those factors have gotten better, those negative perceptions still exist, Narkhede said, but this project hopes to bring attention to the historical and atmospheric part of Dinkytown.  

Through this project, the group hopes to bring people’s attention to the atmosphere, dining and nightlife of Dinkytown as well as highlight the historical charm of the neighborhood. 

Eric Picha, another group member, said the project aims to highlight local businesses through its branding, logo and messaging, which group members created on the website Canva. The group used colors similar to the University’s and created simple logos that they believe would benefit Dinkytown, Picha said.  

“We really wanted to just show the connection that Dinkytown could have with all students, even visitors, alumni, just everyone, making everyone feel welcome in Dinkytown,” Picha said.

Student fitness class instructors for the University of Minnesota’s Recreation and Wellness center help themselves, students and the community enjoy the benefits of fitness through group classes.

The RecWell offers a multitude of classes for everyone of all levels and abilities to enjoy. 

To participate in the classes throughout the semester, people must purchase a FitPass through the RecWell website. FitPasses are available for classes in the fall, spring and summer semesters, and a new pass must be bought for each semester.

Group fitness instructor and medical school student Sarah Larson has been teaching group fitness classes at the RecWell since she was an undergraduate at the University. 

Larson was certified to teach body pump classes when she was 16. Body pump combines music and fitness together through high repetition, low weight, choreographed routines and is designed to build strength at light weights.

“I was still in high school, so I started teaching at a box gym called Experience Fitness,” Larson said. “Then when I knew I was going to go to the U, I reached out to the group fitness coordinator and made sure I could start teaching as soon as I started.” 

Larson said body pump is different because it is focused on light weights and higher reps, and is a fun way to mix up the training and bring people together.

Each fitness instructor for the RecWell must be certified for the specific class they plan on teaching and CPR certified before their first class, RecWell Fitness Coordinator Alena Flowers said. 

For programs like cycling, which is one of the most popular classes at the RecWell, there is a more extensive process to become certified as a group fitness instructor. 

Although the actual training for cycling is just one day, new cycling instructors each have mentors for the first couple months they are hired at the RecWell, Flowers said.

“So there’s a month or two where they get to practice with their mentor, they get to shadow and teach classes, and then once they are ready, then they are able to then teach their own class,” Flowers said.  

Because it is so popular with students and community members, Flowers said the cycling instructors have created their own small community. 

According to Flowers, being a RecWell group fitness instructor is a passion job and is flexible for students with other commitments. 

Flowers said she tries to give the opportunity to teach when it works for students’ schedules so they do not feel overwhelmed during the semester. 

“New instructors are a lot of times like, ‘I want to teach every single day,’ and I’m like, ‘Great, but let’s start out with one class this first semester,’” Flowers said. “A lot of times you have your school schedule, your work schedule, volunteering, and you kind of forget and just kind of get overwhelmed with it in the beginning.” 

Since working at the RecWell, Flowers said she has loved watching young people and students enjoy fitness classes. 

“It’s just so amazing to watch young students and young people come in to find their passion in group fitness,” Flowers said. “Then develop them into the leaders that they are, once they are leading a class every single week.”

In just a few days, Lot 37 on the University of Minnesota campus will transform into a scene of music, games and more. But for festival organizers, plans have been in the works since November. 

The Spring Jam festival is the University’s annual April festival, featuring live music, food trucks, carnival games and other activities. This year, Spring Jam will take place on April 26.

The festival is planned through Student Unions and Activities with the help of student-workers. 

Lead student planner Jenna Johnson said this year’s focus was to make the event zero-waste, aiming to make everything reusable, recyclable and compostable. 

“We have partnered with the waste recovery team to make this goal more attainable,” Johnson said. “So at Spring Jam, there are only two trash cans, and instead we have waste receptacles that involve recycling, compost and then cans and bottles.” 

Johnson also helped coordinate what student groups will be at the festival to lead activities for students to participate in during the event. 

Groups like the Mahjong club, which will teach students how to play the infamously difficult game, and music group Sentimental Sounds, who will lead a painting activity, are just some of the groups there to recognize student involvement, Johnson said. 

“We want to allow for students to interact with groups that kind of represent them in a way,” Johnson said. “So we want people to interact with these groups in hopes that they find a new group to be involved in, or they see something that just reminds them of them in a way.” 

According to Johnson, another goal this year was to make the event inclusive, diverse and different from festivals in the past. One of the ways they plan to do this is offer a free vendor, The Coffee Cart Minneapolis from 6-9 p.m. 

“Students can just walk up and grab a free coffee, tea or hot chocolate and it’s paid for by the University,” Johnson said. “That’s just something that I’m really excited for.”

Sydney Amundson, a student event planner in charge of festival entry, security and carnival rides and games, said she started planning at the end of December.

Once they were able to gauge vendor availability, it was easier to decide what exactly organizers wanted at the festival this year, Amundson said. For a lot of the carnival games, most planning involved deciding what vendors to feature. 

One of Amundson’s personal goals for the festival was to achieve record attendance, she said. 

“I just want people to show up and have fun, because I think Spring Jam can kind of have some strange expectations, like students aren’t exactly sure what it is,” Amundson said. “I’m just excited for them to show up and have a good time and see that there are a lot of free things for students and that your education also has benefits.”

The University of Minnesota is a national leader for start-up creations and has been consistently ranked in the top four universities in the country the past four years. 

The University launched 25 new startup companies in the last year in various different fields, from biotech to food and agriculture. With the help of the University’s Venture Center, startup creators and researchers can learn how to get funding for their ideas, assess the commercial potential for their ideas and get advice on how to establish their new company, according to the Venture Center’s webpage.

The Venture Center works closely with startup founders to determine the best path forward for their business based on the company idea or available technology. 

WhirrlEnergy

Among the 25 startups created this year is WhirrlEnergy, created by former University PhD candidate and current California Institute of Technology PhD candidate Huan Liu and University Professor Richard James. 

Liu and James developed a Vertical Access Wind Turbine (VAWT) with an advanced power output and a relatively simple design, which can put out greater power compared to other VAWTs.

James said while larger horizontal wind turbines are successful in areas like Southern Minnesota, they are not generally tolerated in many areas, especially urban areas. The use of more compact VAWTs has the possibility to generate wind energy for urban, suburban and rural parts of the world.  

“There’s plenty of room for the homeowner or small town or rural areas or urban areas,” James said. “Even college campuses have lots of buildings on the U of M campus, and you could potentially deploy vertical axis wind turbines on the tops of those buildings.” 

WhirrlEnergy’s VAWT was first inspired by the origami energy designs of structures Liu said she had been researching. Although they strayed from this type of design because of manufacturing issues, Liu and James came up with a new design which still has some elements of origami curves.

According to James, most VAWTs have both an active and a parasitic side, which produces   negative torque and decreases power output. Their new design eliminates the parasitic side of the turbine, allowing for greater power output. 

Liu said one of the many advantages to WhirrlEnergy’s turbine design is that it can still generate energy in lower wind speed, while horizontal wind turbines need a much greater wind speed to work. 

In the future, Liu and James hope to be able to market their VAWT as a more efficient wind turbine for cities, farms and suburban areas. Liu said they hope to create more designs in the future, and she is working on a new design right now. 

“I think our turbine is the best turbine in the world,” Liu said. “I think it has a great potential and a lot of places people can use it. The market is big.”

Alure LLC

Alure LLC, another startup created in the last year, is an environmentally friendly way to eliminate large quantities of invasive Japanese beetles, co-founder James Duquette said. 

The idea for Alure started in a Carlson School of Management class and took off from there, according to Duquette. 

Duquette and co-founder Aditya Prabhu developed an insecticide-infused netting that traps beetles and isolates them to one specific place on the plant. This is meant to replace the user having to spray insecticide all over their plants.   

Prabhu grew up dealing with the effects of Japanese beetles on his mother’s plum trees, Duquette said. To avoid using pesticides on the trees, Prabhu and his brother would have to take the beetles off by hand, which can be very time consuming. 

“The solutions out there right now are hand picking, or spraying pesticides on your plants which kind of defeats the purpose of growing food in your garden if you want to keep it pesticide free,” Duquette said. 

Much of Alure’s success so far comes from student entrepreneurship competitions, Duquette said. Last spring, the company competed in eFest, a student entrepreneurship competition at St. Thomas University, where it won the Minnesota Cup’s student division. 

Duquette said he is hopeful the product can ease the use of pesticides to make growing plants a little easier.

With summer around the corner, students reflect on their experiences finding internships and utilizing career resources at the University of Minnesota. 

The University offers tailored career centers for students across the different colleges. Each center helps students with finding internships, networking, interviews and resumes. 

Katie Razink, director of undergraduate career development at the Carlson School of Management, said the career center can be essential for students who might need help with internship or job interviews.

“Utilize those resume resources if you’re making it to the interviews but not getting further,” Razink said. “Come in for a practice interview, or utilize interviewing.com, which you can access through Handshake.” 

Audrey Ronan, a fourth-year student studying psychology with minors in health services management and Spanish, said she started applying for summer internships in November. 

Ronan submitted 47 applications. Of those, she said she was rejected from 26, and around half never responded to her application. 

“I think that’s a growing trend too,” Ronan said, “A lot of companies just won’t even respond to you, which is why I knew I had to cast a broad net and start submitting applications early.” 

Ronan said she knew she wanted an internship in health administration, applying to four different positions at Blue Cross, Blue Shield Minnesota, where she got hired as an intern for the summer. Her internship is pretty flexible with her degree and gives her a wider breadth of possibilities. 

Being consistent and applying to jobs that truly interest you is important, Razink said. For lots of students, narrowing down the job search will help you find better results. 

“For instance, if you’re interested in marketing, instead of searching for ‘marketing internship,’ search for digital marketing or social media marketing internship,” Razink said. “Getting as specific as you can based on the types of positions you’re interested in will yield better results.” 

Lukas Perdekamp, a second-year student studying economics, said he realized throughout his internship search the importance of connections.

Although Perdekamp said he personally does not love networking, he admitted it works. When he was looking for jobs in the fall, Perdekamp went to a networking event where he met a recruiter and applied for the job while keeping in touch with her, which made all the difference. 

“I got an interview, and she said that they probably would have dropped me if I didn’t reach out to her,” Perdekamp said. “So I already had the interview.” 

Razink also emphasized the importance of networking not just in finding a job for the summer but also for future career searches after college or for postgrad. 

“Doing that, again back to that bigger picture, you’re building a network for a future search,” Razink said. “You have an established connection in that space.”

The University of Minnesota’s College of Design flipped the script with its Design is Blind networking event on Friday. Design firms present themselves to students instead of the other way around, helping to alleviate the stress of what may be considered a usual networking event.

 Jordan Hedlund, a member of the Design Student and Alumni Board, said the atypical networking fashion was meant to be helpful.

The event was inspired by the Netflix original series “Love is Blind,” a reality show where contestants search for love without seeing each other, Hedlund said. The event took inspiration from this idea.

Hetlund said without revealing the name of their firm, 11 design firms presented a single image related to their firm while speaking about their work. After a round of questions, the firm is revealed.

As a relatively recent University alumnus who graduated with a bachelor’s in 2016 and a master’s in 2021, Hedlund said he remembers how difficult it was to navigate the design industry at even a local level.

Both Hedlund and fellow board member Norman Palacious planned Design is Blind as a way to help students understand the industry without having to do the extra work of putting together a portfolio and resume.

“We wanted to try and expedite that and bring the firms to the students,” Hedlund said. “So that if the students show up, they can basically be there in a social situation with firms.”

After the presentations, students got the chance to network with their peers and the presenting firms. With a large array of firms attending, students had the chance to meet with both larger national and local firms.

Hedlund said the idea of the event was to make it easier for students to find a job and make connections for internships as well as jobs after graduation.

Michael Stoll, an undergraduate member of the Student and Alumni Board, helped to plan the event and emceed the presentation portion.

Stoll joined the board last spring to fill extracurriculars. The main goal of the group is to make sure students get connected with firms and find a job when they graduate.

When the idea for Design is Blind was presented at a brainstorming session for the Student and Alumni Board, Stoll thought it could be an interesting way to network. The idea snowballed from there, he said.

“I think both the students and the firms quite enjoyed it,” Stoll said. “I think they gave some really good networking opportunities, especially afterward, once the main part of the event was over.”

BizPitch, a Shark-Tank style business competition at the University of Minnesota through the Gary S. Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School of Management, is officially underway, with applications opening in early March and closing on March 19. 

Anyone can apply for free, and the final eight students are chosen to pitch their idea in front of a panel of judges for the final round on April 2. 

The judging panel selects competition winners in the grand prize, most innovative, biggest social impact and people’s choice award divisions. The grand prize winner will receive a prize of $2,000 and access to advisory services, courses and other competitions to formally launch their idea. 

According to the BizPitch webpage, not only will students have a chance to win cash prizes, they will also have a chance to receive feedback from previous participants, who are often members of the judging panel. 

Bjorn Franke, last semester’s BizPitch grand prize winner, said his idea came from the shoelaces on his running shoes. 

Marathon running shoes have sharper edges that can give them a better grip and stay tied, according to Franke. Franke’s business, Gator Laces, applies that same idea to hockey laces. He said the laces he created have a sawtooth grip that makes tying skates easier, more durable and stay tied longer. 

Keeping skates tied is a problem many younger hockey players have, Franke said. As he started his company, Franke targeted younger players first and hoped to branch out to high school, college and professional teams. 

“It’s a product that, honestly, anybody could use,” Franke said. “I’d like to have it where all the players are using it, whether they be high school, college or youth sports.” 

For Franke, getting funding as well as feedback was valuable in many ways. Winning $2,000 to kickstart his business was important to get running, he said.  

As for feedback, Franke said although his business idea itself did not change, he was able to hear from judges on where to reach out to different retailers, patenting and licensing and things he did not think about when starting his business. 

John Stavig, program director of the Holmes Center, said the feedback students receive on their business pitches is one benefit of participating in BizPitch. 

“Most importantly, it helps them get connected with the resources to help them move forward,” Stavig said. “Whether that’s some of the programs we have where they can get mentoring and seed capital to advance their business ideas, or just connections with attorneys or investors to move their ideas forward.” 

Since its inception, many of BizPitch’s winners have gone on to win larger startup competitions like the Minnesota Cup, Stavig said. 

“Usually these businesses are not up and running businesses,” Stavig said. “These are early ideas for the students, but there are several, like Swannies Golf apparel or Smackin’ Sunflower Seeds, that are doing over 20 million in revenue just a few years after they floated their idea in this competition and starting with the idea forward.” 

Stavig said BizPitch has had winners from all across campuses, with many different majors. Although the application period closed March 19, finalists will be notified on March 24 and the final 90-second pitches will be presented on April 2.

Franke said he thinks even those who do not win the competition can take something away from BizPitch. 

“It’s a great opportunity for anyone who’s looking to get an initial startup and financing, and anybody looking for practice on just pitching their idea, regardless if you win or lose,” Franke said. “I think there were over 65 applicants, then narrowed down to eight, and I happen to be the one that won it.”

The University of Minnesota Masonic Cancer Center’s (MCC) Goldy vs. Cancer event aims to educate the public about cancer through exhibits from the center’s researchers.

The event will be held at the Science Museum of Minnesota on Saturday at no additional cost to museum attendees. The goal is to engage museum attendees through hands-on activities, according to the MCC website. It is particularly important for young children who may be interested in STEM careers, MCC events coordinator Elsie Aldrich said. 

MCC is always trying to get the word out about different STEM careers, and the Science Museum is a great way to meet young scientists where they are, Aldrich said. The people who visit the museum tend to be families with young children, so it is a great place to reach that audience. 

“It’s also a really lovely way for us to share information about the research that’s happening at the cancer center with the public,” Aldrich said. “I think a lot of times that work happens behind closed doors, and so folks don’t really know what cancer research looks like.” 

Having different researchers from the MCC attend the event to showcase what they are researching is extremely helpful for the public to understand what work is being done by researchers, Aldrich said.  

“To have scientists able to talk to kids about what they do on a day-to-day basis I think, can be really impactful,” Aldrich said.

According to MCC’s website, there are many exhibits for families and the public to explore, including exhibits on cancer fighting foods, genetically modified cells, cancer in animals, clinical trials and more. 

Susannah Bartlow, community outreach and engagement manager for the Minnesota Cancer Clinical Trials Network, has an exhibit at the event. She said she hopes the exhibit will help inform the public about the different cancer clinical trials available and what the treatment is like. 

Sometimes people may be hesitant about cancer clinical trials just because they do not understand what they are, Bartlow said. She hopes to educate the public about it with this event.

“We just want to kind of start with that baseline, make sure people understand that clinical trials are safe, that people who do clinical trials are always also getting the standard of care,” Bartlow said. “So it’s not like you would do a clinical trial and not get treated. People are always also still getting treatment for whatever they’re going through.”  

The Minnesota Cancer Clinical Trials Network is part of the MCC and works with five different healthcare systems to bring cancer clinical trials throughout the state. 

“We really want to bring clinical trials closer to home for more people across Minnesota,” Bartlow said. “So we have 24 different sites where people could participate in clinical trials.”

Educating people about clinical trials is the Minnesota Cancer Clinical Trials Network’s mission, according to Bartlow. She is passionate about making sure everyone has the same opportunities and is educated about clinical trials. 

“Sometimes it can be challenging for everybody to get good medical care or to get the information that they need,” Bartlow said. “The reason that I love doing outreach work in this field in particular is because it kind of levels the playing field, so that everybody can understand what we’re doing and understand the best options that are available to them.”