The Student Community Innovation Program (SCIP) offers high school and college student volunteers a unique opportunity to make a difference in their community through innovation. Guided by talented mentors and equipped with cutting-edge fabrication resources, students work together to develop a solution to address a community need. From ideation to prototypes and eventual implementation, SCIP empowers students to dream big, welcome growth and develop invaluable technical and life skills.
"SCIP showed me that I can take an active role in my world; I learned the innovative and thorough thought process needed to solve real-world crises. With other SCIP students, I founded a Gardening Club at my school, implementing the leadership and precious life skills we learned from SCIP." - Connor Lafo, 2021 SCIP team member
2024 scip TEAM
In Summer 2024, a team of 18 high school students partnered with Star Lab, an innovative new school for underserved students founded by local educator Alison Rini. Over two months, volunteers worked alongside professional mentors as well as Alison and her team to develop engaging Montessori-style resources to incentivize Star Lab students to learn. The SCIP team developed, designed and built classroom furniture and hands-on educational manipulatives. They also created a badging and mastery tracking system to award students tangible badges based on topic mastery. This project included a custom web-app, where Star Lab students, teachers and parents can track progress remotely.
This partnership was invaluable to Star Lab, allowing them to expand their offerings, make learning fun and reallocate limited funding. By contributing to the development of Star Lab, our students offered unique perspectives and helped shape a pioneering educational initiative.
2023 SCIP TEAM
A group of 19 students from Sarasota and Manatee counties teamed up with the Manatee County Health Department to create innovative and engaging sculptures that raise awareness of preventative health initiatives. Working with local artists and sculptors, the team took the art concepts from sketch to creation using the Fab Lab's high-tech machinery. They also created educational signage to accompany each piece. Check them out below!
2022 SCIP TEAM
Over the summer of 2022, a group of 20 students worked in partnership with Crowley Museum & Nature Center to design and build habitats for local wildlife in need. They also developed a custom educational website to help raise awareness of wildlife conservation and created eye-catching signage for each habitat. Click here to check out the website they made.
2021 SCIP TEAM
Over the course of two months, twenty high school and college students worked alongside Sarasota Urban ReForesters, Florida Veterans for Common Sense Fund Inc., Rotary Club of Sarasota Bay and Solutions To Avoid Red Tide to design and construct a micro forest at Stoneybrook Golf & Country Club. The students also developed an exciting educational website component that greatly expanded the project's impact. The 2021 SCIP project has energized the community about critical environmental issues and created a lasting ecological resource for the gulf coast.
2020 SCIP TEAM
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, through Zoom meetings and remote work, nearly 20 students worked with talented mentors to develop an interactive storybook web-app to teach elementary school students how to return to school safely. The app, COVIDucation.net was completed in partnership with Sarasota County Schools. Another team of students designed, prototyped and built a touchless door handle for local businesses and organizations to help slow the spread of COVID-19.
