Chaffey College joins the SolveCC Competition
SolveCC, or Solve Community Challenges, is a competition in which students work together in teams of two or more, exploring, identifying, and researching problems in their communities. This year, the competition will be open to all Chaffey College students.
By China Ang
The mission statement on SolveCC’s website is to “Inspire and empower promising innovators to collaborate and engage in impact-driven projects that build the skills, confidence, and connections to shape the future of their communities.”
Shenuei Weber, the Associate Superintendent, Workforce Innovations and Entrepreneurial Development, says, “The competition is designed to help Chaffey College students learn and practice important skills such as problem-solving through an open inquiry approach, critical thinking, collaboration, teamwork and much more, while applying their talents in contributing to their communities.”
With SolveCC still in its infancy, Chaffey College will be the third college to participate in this competition.
Teams with at least one Chaffey College student will send in an application at solvecc.org by Aug. 31, 2023. After that, teams will be assigned to a SolveCC Faculty Team Coach, one of whom is mentioned above.
Weber, along with three other coaches, will be helping guide teams through the different stages of the competition. These stages include researching areas of interest, understanding the scale of the problem, creating a problem statement, interviewing people associated with the problem statement and creating the final problem statement and submitting it. More information about the specifics of the competition can be found on the website.
Each team will have until the end of October to finish and submit their completed problem statements and the top ten teams will be announced in November.
“The best part is that the competition offers prizes for teams with the best problem statements. The top 3 teams will win $2,000 each, and seven teams will win $500 each,” Weber states.
If that is not incentive enough, here is what another Faculty coach, Robert Ian Jones, says about the importance of joining SolveCC,
“I would say that what students do in the classroom is only part of what we do in college. The knowledge one accrues in class is invaluable, and this is further developed through practice. A degree opens doors to jobs, yes, but it is the ways we engage with our community along the way that helps one build a career that is meaningful and personally fulfilling.”