Klamath County students to benefit from expanded hands-on learning at Oregon Tech

Klamath County, Oregon – Oregon Tech has received a $25,000 grant from The Lemelson Foundation to grow its “Ready, Set, Innovate!” program, in what appears to be a huge support in boosting educational innovation. Originally targeted at developing future inventors and changemakers, this program will now improve its curriculum to incorporate both in-school and extended pre- and post-event learning opportunities. Effective from January 6, 2025, through June 15, 2026, the grant represents a turning point in enhancing the innovative ecosystem of the university.

With significant expansion over the past three years, the “Ready, Set, Innovate!” program focuses on giving students from K–12 real-world project management, teamwork, and creative experience. These opportunities help students to properly address community issues and develop confidence in fundamental abilities including communication, teamwork, and navigating uncertainties.

Targeting high school, community college, and early-career university students through hands-on learning and empathy-building activities, Oregon Tech hopes to enhance student involvement with the new funding. Furthermore, the approach will improve the creativity process by providing contextual information before events and developing ideas afterward, therefore enabling students to gain a better grasp of the complexity of the invention process.

Improving community alliances is another vital component of the upcoming stage of the initiative. The initiative solves local economic and social issues by letting sponsors and stakeholders include student-generated solutions into their activities, thus promoting community development.

Oregon Tech Business Management professors Hallie Neupert and Kristy Weidman, who were instrumental in completing the grant proposal, expressed their enthusiasm about working with The Lemelson Foundation going forward.

“After receiving seed funding from The Lemelson Foundation to develop Ready, Set, Innovate! we are thrilled to be partnering again to take the program to the next level,” said Neupert. “This funding allows us to build on the success of the program and expand its impact in ways that are sustainable, scalable, and directly beneficial to our community.”

Over the next 18 months, the project will be carried out in two phases. Prototyping the program model forms the first phase, which spans January through June 2025. Working with K–12 pilot schools, community partners, and Oregon Tech faculty, this phase will see curriculum development that links classroom learning to practical innovation issues. Maximizing student involvement and improving post-event solutions will take front stage.

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With an eye toward scaling the program across other colleges and community organizations, the second phase—from July 2025 to June 2026—will involve pilot testing the curriculum and iterating based on feedback. This phase also emphasizes building alliances between academic innovation hubs and K–12 systems.

The larger influence of the enlarged “Ready, Set, Innovate!” program is to enable students to create creative ideas that solve local problems, interact closely with their neighborhoods, and strengthen the area economy. Oregon Tech is modeling educational innovation that successfully closes the gap between K–12 and college experiences by encouraging a cooperative atmosphere among students, teachers, and community stakeholders.

To further learn about the “Ready, Set, Innovate!” program or to get involved, interested parties should get in touch with Hallie Neupert at [email protected]. This project promises to improve educational results as well as to create a sustainable framework for invention education that can have long-lasting effects for Klamath County and beyond.