Our vision for the Hoaby Innovation Center is that it will inspire innovation and entrepreneurialism amongst electrical and computer engineering students in the ECE department at NDSU, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
By being a resource for students, we hope to encourage engineering students to discover and use their imaginative and creative talents – and to be more knowledgeable about how to innovate, how to manage innovation, how to manage their rights regarding their intellectual property, and how to be entrepreneurial.
Growing in these skills will, we hope, help students be part of start-up firms in the area including technology transfers, and be more valuable employees by helping their employers be more competitive in the national and global economies.
The Hoaby Innovation Center is a multi-faceted initiative intended to encourage and support student innovation and entrepreneurship in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department at North Dakota State University (NDSU). It is a result of a collaborative effort between the ECE department and members of the Hoaby family.
At present the Hoaby Innovation Center has three components. The original component is the Ernest Hoaby Innovation Scholarship. In memory of Ernest Hoaby, it recognizes up to three student projects per year that entail a substantial and meritorious measure of innovation. Students must apply to be considered for this scholarship. The Innovation Scholarship is managed by and is under the auspices of the ECE department and the NDSU Development Foundation.
The second component is The Innovation Corner. It is a modest, but growing, library of books and periodicals owned by the ECE department. It was formed to encourage students and faculty in innovation and entrepreneurship, and to compliment the Innovation Scholarship. The titles in the library are a result of ongoing donations by members of the Hoaby family to the ECE department.
The third component is the Center's web-site. It provides a central location for communicating the Center's activities, and communicating opportunities and news to students and faculty.
The web-site and the name Hoaby Innovation Center ® are the property of members of the Ernest Hoaby family.
The Hoaby Innovation Center was conceived in the fall of 2006, but its first component preceded this by many years.
The Ernest Hoaby Memorial Scholarship was initiated in 1968 by Ernest Hoaby's parents – Ted and Mamie Hoaby of Lisbon, North Dakota – after Ernest's death of leukemia in 1967. For many years, the scholarship was awarded to electrical engineering students who had strong academic performance. Some consideration was also given for financial need.
In the early 1990s, Ernest's son, Scott Hoaby – a graduate of NDSU (BSEE), an employee of IBM, and an MBA graduate (U. of St. Thomas) who had focused on innovation in his MBA studies – approached NDSU's Electrical Engineering department about changing the mission of the Ernest Hoaby Scholarship to one of innovation. The idea was to encourage students to think more about being innovators and entrepreneurs. Though the scholarship did not change at that time, a seed was sown.
By the early 2000s, several things had occurred to help enable the change. For one, the Ernest Hoaby endowment fund had grown through donations, making awards for innovation feasible. Second, by the early 2000s, awareness had grown across North Dakota that the state needed to diversify its industries. To do this, a change of thinking was required toward more entrepreneurialism accompanied by innovation. The government of North Dakota, its universities (led by UND and NDSU), and its senators in Washington all began agitating for change. Many things resulted from these initiatives such as North Dakota's Ambassadors program, UND's Center for Innovation, NDSU's Research Park, and the opening of a U.S. Patent and Trademark Depository Library (PTDL) in Grand Forks (at the Chester Fritz Library of UND).
Meanwhile, the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department at NDSU was undergoing its own renaissance. While the department had been emphasizing partnerships with businesses, faculty members and a new department chair – Dan Ewert – began to also put a greater emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurialism. It was about this time that Professor Val Tareski of the ECE department encouraged Scott to once again initiate changing the Ernest Hoaby scholarship to one of innovation.
In 2006, four professors of the ECE department – Floyd Patterson, Roger Green, Val, and Dan – worked with Scott to make the change. A new application was generated in the fall and then made available to students in January 2007. The first award was given four months later.
Those discussions were also the genesis for the Innovation Corner – a department library of resources focusing on innovation and entrepreneurialism. It was conceived to complement the Ernest Hoaby Innovation Scholarship by also encouraging and supporting innovation and entrepreneurialism.
On 26 April 2007, the ECE department awarded the first Ernest Hoaby Innovation Scholarship and dedicated the Innovation Corner. Several members of the Ernest Hoaby family attended this event – Ernest's former wife Jane Solhjem (and her husband, Iver), his sister Ilene Larson, his niece Debbie Larson, and his son Ted. It meant a lot to the Hoaby family that two faculty members who were close friends of Ernest were able to attend this event – Floyd and Val.
A last result of those discussions, was the idea for a Hoaby Innovation Center website to tie the above elements together, and provide a means for timely communication of news. The Hoaby Innovation Center website went on-line in February 2008.
There is not enough space to outline all the contributions over several years that various people have made to enable the above things to happen. It includes faculty members in the ECE department, various extended family members of Ernest Hoaby, as well as the work, advice, and insights of many friends. To all of you, thank you.