The Student Soybean and Corn Product Innovation Competitions are a chance to get involved with real world issues concerning business, the environment, and your future. These competitions provide students like you great opportunities to learn, discover, and practice the career path you've chosen. As students in the past will tell you, it provides you with the right materials that will really knock the socks off future employers! Here's a YouTube video for you to watch.
Here's a slideshow of the products made in 2009-2010. And here's a slideshow of products made in previous years.
Burton D. Morgan
Many students who have won the soy and corn competitions also entered the Burton D. Morgan Competition and won because they had a prototype to go with their elevator pitch.
So get out there and get started!
Receive Awards and Prizes for Corn and Soybean Competitions...
Cash awards will be given to teams based on judges' ranking of their products. First prize in both competitions is $20,000! Students in the past have made serious money that keeps rolling in even after they're done with all of the work.
Make A Commercial Product...
You can't go to a store and not see something made from soy or corn. The possibilities of products are nearly limitless as students have produced foods, industrial products, and fun products such as crayons and candies. Imagine putting a product you made in front of an employer at an interview. Not only that, but with royalties for commercialized products, it's like the gift that keeps on giving! Interested yet?
Get Publicity and Recognition...
If your name in bright lights is your thing, here's your chance to shine. Students have been on television, radio, newspaper, magazine, in such prestigious media organizations as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Chemical Engineering News, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Sound too good to be true?
Well, we've got the stats to back up all of our claims.
100% of past participants have gotten jobs or gone on to higher education (i.e. medical school or degrees in their respective specialized areas) immediately after graduation. This in part reflects the important capabilities and skills they gained from the competition.
100% of the products coming from the competition have a patent disclosure with Purdue University. How many students can tell that to recruiters?
Several patents have been issued since the competition began, and several others have been filed with the application process. This not only means royalties for the inventors, but is a tremendous accomplishment for anyone to achieve, let alone an undergrad!
Three products have been commercialized or are in the process of being commercialized, meaning a company is actually producing one of the students' ideas. The next could be yours!
"I don't have enough time!!"
Everyone knows that college students are the busiest people on the face of the earth. And now we're asking you to give up even more of your time? This extra curricular activity is not just more school work, but an investment that will return itself tenfold. The time that you put in will come back to you in the form of laboratory skills, knowledge of marketing and business, possibly even money, and most of all - FUN.
Plus, you will be working in a team. One of the best sanity-survival techniques offered is very simple: divide the workload evenly among team members so that no one person ends up doing all the work. Besides the usual benefits of teamwork (i.e. creativity, multi-tasking, etc.), you will have your friends working alongside you, everyone helping each other and having a good time.
"This sounds like another lab class, why would I want to put myself through this?"
Don't think of this as another laboratory class because ... it's not. First of all, almost everything is on your own time, so there is no set time each week or each day that you are forced to come in. Second, there are no procedures that you are spoon fed and no protocols handed to you; during your research, all methodology will come from yourself and your own background knowledge. This allows you the freedom to express your creativity and stretch your brain.
"I don't have a very good GPA. How does this affect my participation in the competitions?"
Not at all. Nowhere in the criteria does it say anything about what your grade was in quilting class back in freshman year. Instead, the competition rewards creativity and hard work. So come join, even if it's just to prove to your quilting instructor that the detailed blueprints of the civil engineering building you quilted for your final project was a masterpiece, and much better than the requested 'flower border with primrose interior.'
"What if I put in all this hard work, creativity, and extra hours of laboratory time and then I don't win!?"
Even if your product doesn't get a top ranking, you still should put the competition on your resume. When recruiters and interviewers see it there, they will be intrigued and ask you about it. Just think of what your reputation will be when you tell them that you participated in the project of your own volition, working in a team of your peers, in order to innovate new environmentally safe products and to improve society. In a world of cookie cutter engineer resumes, this could be what sets you above the rest!
Not to mention all the intangible benefits that will come with just completing the project. These are such things as learning laboratory skills, gaining knowledge about marketing and business, learning to work on a team, understanding the research and design aspect of new products, and developing your project management and communication skills.
