Making changemakers: How to train and motivate students entering innovation and entrepreneurship programs

Caroline Clay

Abstract

This thesis combines the work of two qualitative studies about student changemakers at the same public university in the south. The first study uses ethnographic data from a University Innovation Fellows cohort alongside autoethnographic data from the author (a University Innovation Fellow from a different cohort) to examine the behaviors and learning processes of students as they go through training to become student changemakers. The second study uses qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with female students who have participated in a variety of innovation and entrepreneurship programs to examine the motivations and barriers to entry affecting female students in these programs. Together, the studies work together to provide evidence about how students get involved in innovation, entrepreneurship, and changemaker programs and how they experience the process of becoming changemakers in higher education.