CTZN 410 (Honors) – Lancer Launchpad

The Civitae Capstone course that I took was Lancer Launchpad, taught by professor Jacob Dolence. This was quite honestly the best class I have taken in the Civitae cirriculum. The class focused on launching a solution to a problem into the world, and had an entrepreneurial focus. In the class, we talked about systems thinking, project planning, and worked on our semester projects for most of it.

This class has changed the way I may approach the professional world. In my head, there are two “routes” when talking about entering the software development world, you can either work for someone else and just be a developer, or you can have your own start-up that you build from the ground up. I used to think that all I wanted was to have a nine to five job where I am told what to do and when to do it. However, this class really showed me more about the start-up route. I really enjoyed the freedom that “being your own boss” has, especially when it comes to software.

Embedded above is a short video we filmed for our semester project. We created a prototype for an app that would help users track their food waste and alert them when their food was close to going out of date. It was really nice to be able to use my technical programming skills in a non computer science class, especially when it came to solving a problem like reducing food waste. The video assignment itself was a very interesting assignment. It showed yet another side of launching a start-up, getting the word about your product out there. In the working world, this would be something that you could send to potential investors to try to get them on board with the product. The assignment really helped me understand this side of entrepreneurship that I never considered in my previous knowledge of the topic.