Innovation in Action

On April 30, the engineering, entrepreneurship, and research projects typically contained within the Shari and Edward Glazer Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI) poured into the hallways and across campus as the CEI hosted the annual Celebration of Innovation. The evening brought together all five of the CEI’s programs —Research, Computer Science and Software Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Engineering, Robotics and Fabrication, and Media Studies—in a showcase of the creativity and curiosity of the students in those programs, their ideas, and the projects they have worked on this school year.

“The CEI is built around a simple but powerful idea: students learn deeply when they are creating, collaborating, experimenting, iterating, and sometimes failing forward,” Director of the CEI Dr. Allison Ponzio shared. “Our students are not just learning. They are learning how to ask better questions, how to build something from an idea, how to respond when things do not work the first time, and how to turn curiosity into impact.”

The evening also highlighted the way Marlborough begins building these skills early. Alongside work from Upper School CEI programs, the Celebration of Innovation included 9th Grade History projects and 8th Grade Science research projects. This continuum of learning was visible as guests moved through campus, seeing firsthand the growth from foundational curiosity to advanced execution.

Parents, guardians, staculty, and students spent time stopping by student presentations and displays all over campus, learning about their questions, months of discovery, and analysis. Inside the CEI, guests visited the Corner Café—a student-run business and café serving snacks and drinks—where they could learn about their business model and even taste-test their top-selling products. 

In the Collins Room, presentations from Mustang Capital, Capstone in Social Justice students, Engineering and Invention for Impact pitches gave guests a window into the range of problems and questions students had spent the year trying to solve. The evening closed with a robotics scrimmage, where robotics team members walked guests through their entirely student-fabricated and engineered robots and demonstrated this year’s ball-launching competition. It was a fitting end to a kinetic evening full of big ideas. 

What connected every corner of campus at the Celebration of Innovation was not just technical skill, but a shared mindset. “Innovation does not happen in one lane,” Dr. Ponzio reflected. “It happens when a student who loves storytelling learns to use data. It happens when a robotics student thinks like a designer. It happens when a researcher begins to see herself as an entrepreneur. It happens when a student journalist asks a sharper question, when a coder builds something useful, when a team has to go back to the drawing board and realizes the drawing board is actually where the magic lives.”

The annual Celebration of Innovation showcases the ways in which students at Marlborough are given permission and support to explore their pressing questions, express their ideas, and learn real world skills. The event is a shining example of what happens when students are given the tools to delve into their curiosities and imagine new possibilities for tomorrow, work that happens in the CEI each and every day.