Enterprising students solve sticky problem

By Mary Garrigan, Journal staff

RAPID CITY -- A team of freshman engineering students from South Dakota School of Mines & Technology took two hours and some sticky notes to come up with an idea for a new product that took top honors in the EntrepreneurshipWeek USA Challenge.

Post-it notes that require nothing but a finger nail or pointy object with which to write helped earn a team of South Dakota School of Mines & Technology freshman engineering students top honors at the Entrepreneurship Week USA Challenge.

The national contest requires students to stretch their entrepreneurial muscles by adding value to a common everyday object. The object chosen for this year's contest was the ubiquitous Post-it Notes.

"What do you need with a sticky note?" asked Mark Wager, a freshman from Gettysburg who is majoring in mechanical engineering. "You need a pen, so we thought we'd make a sticky note you could use without a pen."

The students' winning idea was Carbon Post-it Notes. Much like carbon-copy paper, the Carbon Post-it Note would eliminate the need for pen or pencil. You still need some type of writing utensil, however, and the team's entry video demonstrates that it only takes a coin, pair of glasses, a finger or even the tip of a shoelace to write on the Carbon Post-it Note.

In addition to Wager, the winning team consists of Lance Hildebrandt, a computer science/computer engineering major from Faith; Caleb Skjervem from Helena, Mont., who has not decided on a major; Karmen Powell, an electrical engineering major from McIntosh; Akash Adhikari, a mining engineering and management major from Rapid City; and Colin Nelson, a civil engineering major from Mitchell.

There were more than 200 submissions from across the country, including 15 other Tech teams from the General Science and Engineering class, where the contest was a class assignment.

"When Lance called and told me we won, I said, 'You mean out of the other GSE teams?' And Lance was like, 'No, we won the national contest,'" Wager said. "We beat teams from places like Texas A&M."

Wager and his teammates don't know if their invention will ever see the marketplace, but they do know that they won't make millions if it does. "At first, we wondered, should we patent it? But as part of the contest, you sign away any rights to any of the products," Wager said.

Their prize will be the chance to meet with a world-class entrepreneur who will be on the Rapid City college campus later this year.

The Challenge contest was part of EntrepreneurshipWeek USA, which ran Feb. 24 through March 3 and was sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, The New York Times and Inc. magazine. The EntrepreneurshipWeek USA initiative was designed to serve as an inspiration for young people to think creatively and to turn their ideas into action - whether that means starting a new business, developing an innovation for an existing company or solving a problem that makes society better.

"What a fantastic kick-off to our entrepreneurship focus on the campus of the School of Mines," Butch Skillman, professor of mechanical engineering and the coordinator of EntrepreneurshipWeek USA on campus.