Windsor business students team up with U.K. science students
As a fourth-year business student at the University of Windsor, Sydney Thompson hasn’t looked at a biology book since high school.
The 23-year-old is getting a crash course in scientific terminology this week as part of a unique collaboration that partnered Odette business school students with six visiting bioscience students from Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom.
“I was totally overwhelmed,” Thompson said of trying to absorb the research work done by the U.K. students. “I haven’t taken biology since I was in high school. It’s been a little crazy for me. They were using terms I don’t even understand. I was completely lost in these documents. It’s been really beneficial for them to come here and describe what they’re doing.”
The Oxford Brookes’ group of six students and two faculty advisers arrived in Windsor on Monday and leave Friday.
They’re working with seven Windsor business students to develop strategies to bring their innovations to market.
Offering an international multidisciplinary graduate course such as this is part of the Entrepreneurship Practice and Innovation Centre’s mandate.
Thompson is working on a project involving vaccines in animal agriculture.
“This is a boutique course collaborative,” said Francine Schlosser, the EPICentre’s executive director. “It’s an unique collaborative because it’s over an entire term. It’s four months of work so it’s really important for them to meet face to face.”
The Windsor students will visit the Oxford Brookes campus in late October.
“I have not seen a collaborative like this anywhere at any other university,” Schlosser said. “One that’s over an entire term, in two different universities in two different countries.”
It exposes the bioscience to the business skills and vice versa.
“Plus, they’re getting a whole sense of different economies in different countries,” Schlosser said. “They’ll get to see how the markets are different in Canada from the U.K.”
The goal is not to start a business but to commercialize the various bioscience technologies.
Oxford Brookes student Harrison Davies is working on a complicated endeavour involving biodiesel fuel.
“This is a really good opportunity,” the 20-year-old Davies said. “It’s something a little bit different. It’s a whole module (term) where if I hadn’t done this I would be taking lectures and practicals. Business is something I’m quite interested in because I don’t necessarily see myself in a lab.”
As part of the experience here, the group has toured the FCA Windsor Assembly Plant, medical marijuana giant Aphria, Pelee Island Winery, the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research and the biodiesel lab of Prof. Ming Zheng.
“The Chrysler plant was massive,” Davies said. “The robotics there were incredible. It was fascinating seeing how it all comes together.”
Davies also got a kick out of seeing the Aphria operation in Leamington.
“It was interesting to see the labs there and how the technologies are being used for such interesting concepts, ones that are totally illegal for us. It was odd.”
The group will stay in touch throughout the term and execute midterm presentations when they gather again in the U.K.
Final presentations will be done in a virtual classroom at the end of the term.