Meet the Chun Challenge for Change Finalist Teams

The challenge invited students to reimagine life on campus, with a particular call for ideas to support sustainability, mental health and wellness, and a sense of belonging at Yale. The finalist teams collectively represent 9 of Yale’s residential colleges, with students coming from majors that range from mechanical engineering to English. At the April 3 pitch-off, they’ll compete for $500 and the chance to have dinner with Dean Chun. Meet the teams.

Breaking the script at Yale

Danielle Harris, Kelvin Brobbey

This team envisions a biweekly event that sponsors a no-phone policy in the dining halls, and/or blocks campus wifi for an hour every month, in order to promote more social engagement and allow students to have insightful discussions around proposed topics.

Commencement Audio Translation

Nathalya do Nascimento Leite, Sarah Ornellas

This team proposes to offer audio translation in different languages for Yale’s main commencement events for international family and friends.

Connect (Her) @ Yale

Pradhi Aggarwal, Zeynep Karakan, Genevieve Liu

Connect(Her) is the first app to connect aspiring women in STEM to their peers and to other professional women.

Coordinate

Janie Wu, Imad Rizvi

This team aims to create a community-building app that increases face-to-face student interaction by facilitating coordination of meals and other free time.

Diversity Dashboard

Anna Zheng, Julianna Viola

Inspired by diversity and inclusion work at UNC, this team hopes to work with the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning and the IT department to implement an online dashboard that would allow professors to view academic data about students in their classes by demographic, so that they can modify their teaching to be more inclusive.

Emotional Intelligence Workshop

Mariano Stephens, Raeven Grant, Jonathan Salazar

This team proposes to provide first-years with an Emotional Intelligence workshop to better promote interpersonal interactions at Yale and provide them with tools to cope with the myriad emotions they will face in their first semester.

Entwine

Kira Sze, Sydney Clos, Ohshue Gatanaga, Nitya Kanuri

Entwine is a suite of tools for college administrators to measure the campus’ mental health climate and identify any opportunities to close perceived gaps in mental healthcare services.

Future of Work @ Yale

Lisa Qian, Dominique Doonquah

This team aims to encourage Yale to complete a study on what the future of work, especially automation, holds for its labor force, from staff to student employees, as well as for greater New Haven. They hope that this study would enable Yale to proactively generate ideas, programs, and policies that ensure it is doing all it can to mitigate the worst consequences for its community members.

Homecooked: Social Dining

Kiddest Sinke, Eric Duong, Kevin Zhen

This team proposes a homecooked supper club for cross-graduate student dinners.

Improving Retention of Femail Students in STEM

Lauren Harris, Ciaran Hassan

These students hope to study the effects of female representation in STEM courses by slightly changing the pre-registration process for introductory math courses (MATH 120 in particular) so that female TFs are randomly assigned to some students; they could then measure the effect of assignment to a female TF on retention of female undergraduates in higher level math courses, particularly in MATH 225, which is a gateway course to higher mathematics, higher computer science, and graduate study in economics.

Let's Grab a Meal

Braden Cody, Isaac Robinson

Let’s Grab a Meal would be a simple, intuitive app that helps Yalies to find and schedule meals with their friends.

Lighting the Way

Alexandra Forman, Julia Ding, Byron Daniel

To combat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), this team proposes a light therapy program in which “happy lamps” are made accessible in common locations around campus (eg. libraries, cultural centers, the Good Life Center) and available for personal checkout through Bass media equipment rentals.

Mirro

Annie Xu, Miriam Huerta, Jimmy Choi, Tulsi Patel, Will Doyle, Aydin Akyol

The Mirro team is building a smart mirror that's like a gym for the mind.

Putting Mena in the Yale Arena

Yara El-Khatib, Demirkan Coker, Yasmin Alamdeen, Qusay Omran, Zakaria Gedi, Jenna Salameh, Amal Altareb

These students hope to start a Peer Liaison program for MENA (Middle East & North American)-identifying students on campus.

Shareware

Candice Wang, Megan Ahern, Victoria Lim, Tara Litjens

Shareware would be a reusable dishware loan program for student events.

Thinkspaces

Sarim Abbas, Felicia Chang, Teeger Blasheck, Claire Lamarre

Thinkspaces is a web platform that makes collaboration easier by connecting project ideas and skills across campus, and eventually across universities.

Want to hear more about these exciting ideas? Join us at the pitch-off on April 3!