Going beyond traditional academic boundaries, engaging industry, and developing innovation leaders.

Innovation Alley was created to broaden institutional approaches to educating students and the explore new ways of engaging with industry. To serve this mission, Innovation Alley initiatives focus on:

1. Multidisciplinary, applied programming that intentionally extends the learning enterprise beyond the classroom.
2. The development of innovation leaders and other custom programming that meets the needs of industry partners in real-time.
3. Extra-curricular innovation challenges or scrimmages, ideation sprints, and hackathons that push our students to innovate with one another on real challenges. 

Innovation Alley History

Innovation Alley began as an idea championed by the Dr. Kristina Ropella, Dean of the Opus College of Engineering, that Marquette University students could benefit by being given more educational opportunities that go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Recognizing that many of her own students moved beyond strictly engineering roles into business leadership positions as their careers progressed, and that true innovation arises when individuals from various areas of expertise and backgrounds come together to challenge the status-quo, Dr. Ropella laid out a vision for a "space" on Marquette University's campus where the disciplines of business and engineering could collide together. This was the proverbial "back alley" where entrepreneurs and inventors tinker with bold ideas after hours in their garage, where solutions that have solved some of the world's most pressing challenges often begin to come to life.

At Marquette, Innovation Alley would be where students could gain exposure to other disciplines, could actively engage with industry on solving problems, and in so doing experience elements of discovery-driven learning and innovation in action.

Driving higher education innovation through interdisciplinarity, applied learning, and robust industry engagement. 

As of May, 2022, Dr. John M. Knapp was hired as Innovation Alley's inaugural executive director to help drive the initiative's strategy. Since that time Innovation Alley has developed several new programs that have begun to engage numerous colleges at Marquette University beyond business and engineering, creating positive experiences for both Marquette students and partners.

These programs advance the original vision of Innovation Alley while also helping address common criticisms of higher education. At their core, these programs provide Marquette students learning environments that help enhance their skills as practitioners while still in school, all built off of the excellent foundation of a Marquette University curricular education. 

Through innovative thinking that extends the traditional learning enterprise beyond the classroom, Innovation Alley is contributing to the development of work-ready talent, engaging students and faculty in helping solve industry challenges, and supporting the Marquette vision of being one of the most innovative Catholic, Jesuit universities in the world.