Study Wise prototype wins first TU Maker Fest competition
By Sarah Sternhagen, Editor-in-Chief
Three teams of students gathered for Towson University’s first annual Maker Fest––a 24-hour sprint to create a product prototype to solve student issues. Study Wise, a studying and task management system, won first place and a spot as a finalist in the College Cup.
The StarTUp hosted the event at Cook Library and teams gathered at 3 p.m. on Friday for the kickoff event. For the next 24-hours they had access to the space to create their product and pitch. The judges used a rubric when grading which included categories like innovation, practicality and student impact with the prompt: Develop a viable product prototype that addresses common issues faced by students.
“I like how they left a lot of the rubric up for student interpretation, so it gave us a lot of room to really grow and take this project anywhere,” senior Grace Hardy who worked on Study Wise, said.
Each team created a prototype that was up and running for them to pitch to the judges. Study Wise focused on managing studying time. They demoed their app and showed off features like creating specific tasks for assignments, timers for studying sessions and uploading a class syllabus to log all assignments.
Another team of three students created TUrnUp, which aimed to be a hub for all campus events.
“There were a lot of times where I would miss out on events because…I couldn’t find them on the Involved at Towson website,” sophomore Andreas Papacharalampous said.
They showed judges their working site and joint QR code. The site took events from both Involved@TU and the Events at Towson University pages, and had an interactive map for events going on that day and locations for them.
The other team created Coursesight, a platform dedicated to give students insight to courses they wanted to take. It combined professor ratings from Rate My Professor, student comments and had a prototype chatbot to give course specific study tips.
“I definitely learned a lot during the process,” junior Oluwagbenro “Michael” Oluwalade said. “It was definitely like, eye opening to like the startup life and how dedication and hard work and just consistency can get you, you know, a product that you love.”
Interim Dean of the College of Business and Economics Judy Harris, Dean of University Libraries Suzanna Yaukey and Associate Dean of the College of Health Professions Tab Uhrich all served as judges. They rotated between the tables to hear the pitches and ask questions.
“It was a very close decision,” Harris said. “The first place product we thought was more scalable. The content for the app came from the users.”
Since Study Wise won first place, it will automatically be a finalist for the College Cup, a university-wide program where students can win $10,000 towards their innovations. Second and third place teams were invited to apply to the College Cup as well.
Organizers aim to have more niche prompts for future competitions.
“The idea is to expose more students into the experience of being an entrepreneur. You know, of taking an idea or finding a problem and wanting to come up with a solution and seeing that as an opportunity,” Director of Business Engagement and Operations at the StarTUp Ardys Russakis said.
The StarTUp at the Armory is holding another student event, A Fireside Chat: Dana Frank on Tuesday, Nov. 12 at 5 p.m. The author will be talking with TU Foundation President Edna Primrose about what it means to be a multi-faceted entrepreneur.
