In 2011, innovations continued to come out of college campuses, inside and outside the classroom.
1. Colleges are like small cities, so thousands of meals are consumed on campus every day. Some schools found ways to throw less food waste in the trash. Elizabethtown College takes its scraps to a farm where it's converted into electricity.
2. Campuses are trying to reduce their energy use and trash production. The state's partnering with a Philadelphia investment firm to give colleges money for energy-saving products. An idea for a measurement of how much waste institutions generate came to a Penn State staff member in a dream.
3. Schools continue to encourage entrepreneurship. A new business incubator at York College of Pennsylvania provides on- and off-campus expertise, while incubators like the one at Drexel University are expanding.
4. Colleges are testing the boundaries of social media. Alvernia University held a scavenger hunt to create more interaction with its Facebook and Twitter accounts. Harrisburg University temporarily blocked access to social media as an educational exercise for the second year in a row.
5. It's becoming easier for academic research to transfer to the real world. One new fund was formed to invest in startups created with university-developed technology. And Penn State will no longer require ownership of intellectual property stemming from industry-funded research.
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen