Jim Stephenson, president of the Columbus-based International Center for Creativity, which has a partnership with the university, said the hope was to create a purposeful academic and creative exercise that honors the standards of the Cedarville project.
“The students developed ideas and proposals to spark the imagination and creativity of the village team,” he said.
Cedarville offers the Industrial and Innovative Design major through an exclusive partnership with ICC, an industrial design and education joint venture firm. Students in the program spend the first two years on the Cedarville campus, and the last two years in Columbus full-time. Cedarville is the only Christian university in the country to offer an accredited industrial design major.
It’s unclear whether any of the students’ proposals will be implemented, based on project funding, said Deidre Sizer, a member of the Cedarville Revitalization Committee and a member of the university’s faculty. However, the project helped bring students to the negotiating table when talking about development and economic impact.
“We are a college town, and the students are using our downtown,” she said. “They had some big ideas, which I love. It’s all down to the money, of course, but it’s great to have students, a completely different generation looking at it like ‘How about this?’ It helps our vision to see what’s possible.”