Sycarah Fisher, an associate professor in the University of Georgia’s Mary Frances Early College of Education, was recently named to the second cohort of UGA Faculty Innovation Fellows.
The two-year program, which launched last year, fosters connection between UGA faculty and their ideas via the fellows, who act as a bridge between their school or college and the Innovation District to promote entrepreneurship and the commercialization of their ideas.
Fisher joined the Department of Educational Psychology in 2019, and her research focuses on solving real-world problems like substance use prevention and mental health intervention through community partnerships, particularly in low-income, minority-serving areas. Although she is the first faculty member from the College of Education represented in the program, this isn’t her first interaction with the Innovation District.
Two years ago, Fisher enrolled in an Innovation District bootcamp that provided business training, as well as a regional National Science Foundation I-Corps training program in customer discovery, for her own innovation: Community Research Connection, an online platform for researchers looking to recruit members of their communities for research studies, with an emphasis on community-building rather than marketing to reach people.
“I wanted to find a way to connect researchers to communities in a more efficient way, and a way that builds trust, but also honors communities in that process,” she said.
That approach aligns with the Innovation District’s mission of promoting innovation through collaboration. After going through the trainings, and with her project in the pilot phase, Fisher gained an interest in helping connect College of Education researchers with the tools to promote their innovations. Through conversations with faculty, she learned about ideas they’re developing in curriculum, interventions, learning platforms, and testing that are prime for commercialization.
“Sometimes I feel like researchers are slow to bring those things to market because we’re so focused on the research piece of it,” Fisher said. “So I felt like there were a lot of really great ideas in the College of Education that could be commercialized to get to students and teachers and mental health providers a lot more quickly and serve schools in a way that we traditionally haven’t thought about our research.”
As a Faculty Innovation Fellow, Fisher’s goal is to help more people see themselves as participants in the Innovation District, and she is excited to advocate for the opportunities provided by the district in the College of Education.
“I think oftentimes people get into education because obviously they want to help, right? They want to help kids, they want to help schools, they want to help teachers,” she said.
“I’m really wanting people in the College of Education to see that there may be more than one path to provide assistance, and that the commercialization of ideas can be a path that is not only professionally and personally rewarding for faculty, but also rewarding for the wide distribution of really great ideas to the people and places that need them the most.”