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The Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CI&E) will host a Spring Hackathon, which will focus on how to use design thinking to address challenges in the community.

鈥淲e expect to make hackathons a regular part of our co-curricular activities on campus," said Wendy Bolger, director of the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. "They are a way we can engage in a different way with our valued community partners, we can invite the community on to campus to co-create with us, and we can teach new skills to students of all disciplines.鈥�

Loyola students, alumni, faculty, staff, and Baltimore community members are invited to attend the CI&E Spring Hackathon event held on Thursday, Feb. 21, from 5-9 p.m. in the Lange Lounge. The event gets underway with pizza and preliminary exercises at 5 p.m.

The CI&E Spring Hackathon will task participants with practicing using design thinking to make recommendations for how to convey the transformative experience of volunteering with the York Road Initiative鈥檚 community partner, , a Baltimore nonprofit that aims to provide home repairs to low-income homeowners free of charge.

"We are so excited to participate in this innovative and creative approach with Loyola and the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship,鈥� said Bonnie Bessor, executive director of Rebuilding Together Baltimore. 鈥淭he hackathon will help us generate new ideas for raising awareness about our mission and get more people engaged in our mission. Loyola has been a great partner for many years, and this event helps build on that partnership."

The design-thinking model is used to empathize with communities, define and categorize problems, develop solution prototypes, continually conduct research within the communities, and develop recommendations on how to solve the problem.