Every year, Pacific University’s Berglund Center works with students to develop groundbreaking new products and this year’s five projects do not disappoint.
This year’s projects include apps that helps non-native English speakers with the pharmaceutical process, another that facilitates physical therapy specifically for the eyes, and a third app that helps veterans manage mental health emergency situations in their private life.
The other two products for this year are a drinking bottle with compartments for supplements and a machine that fills supplement capsules automatically.
These projects won Berglund Center’s Inspired Ideas competition last year.
“As I tell all my teams, ‘I walk you to the edge, but I can’t push you.’ That’s their thing, my thing is to create the education environment where they have the ability to learn the experience of going through the start-up, but in a very safe and low risk kind of way,” Berglund Center Director, Andy Soria said.
Past students have gone on to start a business with their project, sell the rights to a company or use it to gather data that they used in their doctorate dissertation.
This product development process also gives students experiences “that are sometimes hard to teach in the classroom, but are very important, especially now, as a skill set building for competing in the marketplace to finding and keeping a job,” Soria said.
The Berglund Center is looking to hire students to work on this year’s projects. Students of all disciplines are welcome to help on a project in whatever capacity they can, whether that be drawing design documents or helping program an app.
Students interested in applying for a job can find information on the positions by going to the career page on Pacific’s website and then searching Berglund Center. Students can also contact Soria directly at jasoria@pacificu.edu.
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