Our Centers and Institutes are basically focal points for certain activities that are meant to either provide experience or exposure to different industries. Personally, I'm involved with our Center for Applied Environmental and Geospatial Technology. It's a center that has its own physical space in the university. It's a place where students can go and work and use the laboratory facilities for their own project work if they choose. And it gets them real-world exposure to both brands and external projects. And they're graduating with something like two to 3,000 hours of experience. The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, or "CIE," as we call it. The mission statement is "Empowering innovators to build successful owners." We teach them how to look at problems and come up with solutions, how to look at market and see if there is a need for this solution in the market, and then scale it up into a business. Our center is open to the community members if they have an idea and want to start a business. We are like the hub that gets them off the ground. The center that I have the most experience with would be the Center for Advanced Science and Sustainability with my role in Aquaponics. We have a 3,000-square foot greenhouse in addition to about a 400-square foot Research Lab, that we have both aquaponics and hydroponics setups. Our undergraduate students are involved in the seeding, the transplanting, the harvesting, and pest management, all aspects of it so that we're able to donate on a weekly basis and to be able to give back to our local community. And they are able to be involved in that process and have an immediate impact to food security.
