The Urban Solutions Lab

Explore Prosocial Entrepreneurship

What is the Urban Solutions Lab?

The USL is comprised of two unique spaces: The Creativity Studio and the Collaboration Garage. Each feature easily reconfigurable modular furniture, white boards and push pin boards, and the latest innovative technology. It is the go-to place for entrepreneurial activity on campus serving as a prosocial and pro-Newark place of innovation and business solutions. We help people accomplish their entrepreneurship goals. We teach students skills to drive change in corporations. We engage and support local entrepreneurs.

The Creativity Studio is a classroom and seminar space with long distance learning capability, a smart board, and podcast and videocast equipment including cameras, GoPros, mics, lights, live broadcasting capability, a green screen and post editing equipment. It also broadcasts camera and audio feed overflow to the Collaboration Garage.

The Collaboration Garage is a hands-on active workspace where students, faculty, staff, and visiting entrepreneurs can gather to collaborate and hash out ventures. Features lockers for storage, comfortable lounge seating, A/V capability, and free snacks. Furniture can be configured for solo or group work with some privacy

Students explore ways to remake urban America, developing the social and economic benefits of city life while eradicating factors that contribute to damaging and inequitable environments. Through in-depth research, they learn about opportunities for small scale, community-based real estate development to transform cities and create wealth, and the skills and knowledge needed to enter the field. They also learn about small businesses creation, social entrepreneurship and the production of media that shares stories and advice from local entrepreneurs.

Program and Activities

Field Trips to local makers and creators
Talk (my) Business Series (lecture series with Entrepreneurs)
USL Prosocial Student Stipends/ Internships (pays students to work on their ventures)
USL equipment lending (available for short term use)
Workshops and Training on USL equipment
Podcasts and Videocasts Series
Rotating murals and art featuring local artists

Meet the Team

Ted Baker, Co-director and Co-founder of Urban Solutions Lab

Jasmine Cordero, Co-director and Co-founder of Urban Solutions Lab

Alfred Blake, Strategic Advisor

Sadee Brathwaite, Senior Administrator

Ted Baker, Co-director and Co-founder of Urban Solutions Lab

Ted Baker spent the first 20 years of his adult life helping to build a variety of technology-rich entrepreneurial ventures. He is a professor at Rutgers Business School, where he holds the George F. Farris Chair in Entrepreneurship while serving as founding director of the Rutgers Advanced Institute for the Study of Entrepreneurship and Development (RAISED). He is also Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town and Senior Fellow of the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation & Entrepreneurship. At Rutgers, he co-founded (with Roger Debo) the Collaborative for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (CTEC), building on similar programs he led at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and North Carolina State University. He also co-founded (with Jasmine Cordero-West) both RU-Flourishing, a program that trains and supports previously incarcerated nascent and early-stage entrepreneurs and the Urban Solutions Lab, which brings together students and community stakeholders in pursuit of prosocial entrepreneurship.

Ted’s research explores entrepreneurship under conditions of resource constraint and adversity, focusing on sources and patterns of resourceful behavior. It has been published in leading .

Jasmine Cordero, Co-director and Co-founder of Urban Solutions Lab

Alfred Blake, Strategic Advisor

Sadee Brathwaite, Senior Administrator

GET INVOLVED WITH THE URBAN SOLUTIONS LAB

Organization: Honors Living-Learning Community, Rutgers University-Newark

For more information please contact

Sadee Brathwaite

Senior Administrator

Tel: 973-353-1077