Farley Center, Nuvention Courses, Highlighted in Dean Ottino's Award

On January 5th, 2017, Dean Ottino was awarded the The 2017 Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education from the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for the development and implementation of Whole-Brain Engineering, the McCormick School’s principal guiding strategy for more than a decade.

Our team at the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation are very excited that our center and our flagship NUvention programs were highlighted in the award. Per the NAE announcement, “Under Ottino’s leadership, three areas were leveraged to develop whole-brain engineers: design, entrepreneurship, and leadership and personal development.”

Dean Ottino has been a passionate believer in interdisciplinary collaboration and experiential education which have been strategic pillars for theFarley Center since our founding ten years ago. It all started in 2006 when Dean Ottino agreed to meet with four students from McCormick, Feinberg, Pritzker and Kellogg to hear about their idea for a class focused on innovation in the life sciences. That meeting was the catalyst for NUvention: Medical and led to the creation of our center that Jim and Nancy Farley soon after agreed to endow. Our team has expanded from Michael Marasco in 2017 to over twenty talented faculty and staff and over one hundred advisory board members/coaches that will serve over five hundred students this year.

This award also validates the McCormick and Farley strategy of serving all students from all schools within Northwestern.

Your support, advice, and counsel are an important part of our success and we hope you can share our pride in Dean Ottino’s award. We could not think of a better way to kick off 2017!

Best wishes for a happy and healthy 2017,

Mike Marasco and the Farley Center team