Elaina Eakle
ehe001@marietta.edu
Seniors Alina Kielbasa and Tyler Baltzell were the first Marietta College students to be a part of the inaugural PioPitch program on Feb. 19.
PioPitch was created to provide aspiring student entrepreneurs and existing entrepreneurs with a platform to share their ideas with the college and community.
“We define entrepreneurs as people that are creative problem-solvers; whether the individuals are involved in a for-profit business or not, these individuals are looking to solve a specific problem or fulfill a need and desire community feedback to enhance their decision making process,” Dr. Jacqueline Khorassani, an organizer of PioPitch, said. “Aspiring entrepreneurs have an idea that they want to get off the ground and need feedback to prepare their idea for action; this may be for a community initiative, product, area of research, etc.”
Baltzell and Kielbasa presented their “Pull Out” program designed to decrease energy use at colleges. Their program was the result of a project the two completed in a design appreciation class in the fall, and their professor, Sara Alway-Rosenstock, recommended they present their idea as a part of PioPitch.
One of the primary aims of the “Pull Out” program is to educate students on electricity use.
“We decided that we were about to graduate, and having never lived off campus – always living in the Delt House, or Fayerweather or Harrison… we realized that we don’t know anything about utilities,” Baltzell said.
Baltzell and Kielbasa found that there is an overuse of electricity on campus and designed their program to help solve this problem.
“Everybody just thought, ‘Hey, I pay $40,000 to go here, it’s not my electrical bill – why do I care how much we use?’ And obviously that’s not how we want to make our students go out into this world, and that’s not how we want to teach our students to act,” Baltzell said.
Kielbasa and Baltzell believe that raising awareness of the impact of student electricity use will, in part, improve the problem and save the college a significant amount of money.
“We found that it costs on average, per student enrolled in a four-year university, about $745 a year for electricity costs,” Kielbasa said. “From that, with Marietta College enrollment, that equals approximately $968,000 a year.”
The “Pull Out” program would allow students to view their own energy usage and create a competition between students, awarding 10 percent of the money saved to the students in the room that used the least amount of electricity in each residence hall.
“We really want to be able to monitor it with real time data,” Kielbasa said. “As far as we know there aren’t that many electrical meters in the buildings, and there definitely isn’t one per room in a residence hall. And by installing these and having access to apps and websites that would display the data in a competitive format, that will be much more likely to decrease electricity usage.”
Baltzell stressed that in addition to helping the college save money, increased awareness and education on electricity usage will benefit students after graduation.
“Students want to know how much electricity they are using,” he said. “They want to be more prepared; they want to feel like they are confident when they are getting that first apartment. They want to have as much knowledge as they can.”
Kielbasa and Baltzell asked for students to contact them if they are interesting in becoming involved in the “Pull Out” program and continuing to develop it after Baltzell and Kielbasa graduate. Students can email Kielbasa at Alinarae9313@gmail.com, and Baltzell at Tyler.baltzell@yahoo.com.
“I really think we are going to get a chance for this to be a real thing,” Baltzell said. “We just need a bunch of people who are really energetic; they don’t really need to know a lot about energy and saving.”
Doug Kreinik from Kreinik Manufacturing Co. also presented at the PioPitch session. He discussed challenges for an entrepreneur, gathered feedback from students on his products, and offered advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.
“As an entrepreneur, there are a couple of things that I know,” he said. “Number one, you can fail. You can create new products and nobody buys them, and you feel that you are a failure and then you go on to the next product. And another is to always tell the truth because if you don’t tell the truth, sooner or later you are going to get caught in a lie and it’s not good business.”
The second pilot session of the PioPitch program will be held on April 9. Melanie Preston, founder and owner of Preston’s Beauty Academy, Melanie’s Design Specialists, and the Rejuvenation Laser & Skin Center, and Ryan Smith, founder of Marietta Adventure Company, will be presenting. Feedback from the two pilot sessions will determine the future of the PioPitch program.
“Assuming that we receive favorable feedback, we may organize up to six additional sessions during the 2015-16 academic year,” Khorassani said. “Also, our goal is to have four to five students actually run the program next year under the supervision of faculty.”
