Meet Dr. Yu Chen: Taking tech for good to the university classroom
The SJSU Assistant Professor integrates tech and entrepreneurship to the thread of her curriculum
It can be argued that “luck” favors the fearless and persistent. That is, when you can commit to an idea, endure trials and errors, and focus acutely on the goal, good things happen. As Jan Koum, founder of Whatsapp and alumni of San Jose State University states, “If you really go all in, you go all in. Keep trying. If your original idea isn’t working, use what you’ve built to pivot into something else. Keep trying to find a solution to people’s problems.”
Call for Code is the leading tech for good platform that allows innovators from around the world to explore innovative, transformative solutions to solve the world’s biggest problems. Although a daunting task, we have seen problem solvers from around the world embody the essence of being fearless and persistent, and incredible technology has been bred because of it.
Dr. Yu Chen is an active supporter of using technology to solve massive global issues, and she believes that it’s critical to equip the college student population with the information they need to tackle these issues at scale. As a part of her curriculum, Dr. Yu Chen makes it a point to blend tech, business and entrepreneurship. The Call for Code team was able to catch up with her to discuss her perspective on how students, when provided the right insights and resources can make a real impact on the world:
What value do you see in bringing entrepreneurship and innovation into the education field? What is your motivation behind getting your students involved in this area?
From a pedagogical perspective, innovating is highest level of knowledge mastery according to Bloom’s Taxonomy. If students are able to innovate, that indicates they have achieved the learning goals at a high level. Beyond the classroom, innovation is an essential skill for the future workforce, especially with the fast advancement of technology and automation. I’m hoping students can start to build the awareness, confidence and enthusiasm about innovating.
I got interested in this field after I accompanied a group of students to the award ceremony of the first IBM Call for Code competition in 2018. I was inspired by innovation projects of AI for social good, so I started to integrate mini-projects in this area in all my classes. In the past three years, students have never failed to impress me about their creativity, empathy, and dedication. The young people are super creative, and integrating entrepreneurship and innovation in class is a great way to channel their creativity. Students have also demonstrated a great level of empathy in their innovation projects. Being able to emphasize with the suffering among themselves and others is one of the most valuable qualities to identify an important problem. Since students come from diverse cultures, communities, and family backgrounds, their projects reflect their values and cultural assets, and therefore they are co-creating the knowledge.
Your students have been using AI for social good. What are the solutions you’ve seen that have most surprised you? Where do you think the greatest opportunities lie?
I’m really impressed by all their projects, including the problems they chose to work on and the solutions they offered. One of the projects that impressed me most was a project in Spring 2020, which leveraged machine learning to match healthcare providers in need of PPE and individuals and/or organizations who wanted to donate. I was most amazed because this group consisted of one student who was working at a hospital witnessing the sudden PPE shortage and two students who wished to help. Their life experience helped them to identify an important problem and motivated them to use what they have learned in class to offer a solution. This is just one of the many projects that reflected how students were able to bring their unique life and community experiences to the classroom and then the knowledge they learned in the classroom to offer solutions to problems in their community.
I think the greatest opportunities lie in the extended boundary of their “classrooms”. Their projects should come from and contribute to their own communities, which also become their classrooms. San Jose State University has one of the most diverse student populations in Silicon Valley, and each student carries tremendous cultural assets. When students bring their diverse assets to co-create knowledge, they are contributing to the diversity of AI; when they bring AI to address important social issues in their community, they are bringing informal AI and technology education to their communities.
Technology entrepreneurship involves a combination of business and technical skills. What would be your advice to students who come from either of these backgrounds who are looking to get into this space?
I would suggest students from all majors to bring an open mind to understand, learn from, and collaborate with students from different disciplinary backgrounds. Students from different disciplines bring different knowledge and thinking patterns. Business students might be more exposed to the culture of innovation, entrepreneurship, and organizational leadership, while computer science students have more technical expertise. If students from different backgrounds could work together, the disciplinary diversity could foster innovation. This is not easy. People tend to shy away from or reject differences, but once they appreciate and start to acknowledge and accept differences, they are preparing themselves a mind that is open to more innovation opportunities.
Are you a student who is looking to make an impact on the world? On September 30th, the Call for Code Education Innovation Case Competition is kicking off. With the goal of bringing students together to design solutions to fight back against educational inequality around the world, this is your chance to dive in to a worthy cause. Register now!
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