T-Mobile Business Unconventional Awards

Innovation in Industry

Morehouse College

When it comes to business success, a little creativity can go a long way. Innovative thinking and outside-the-box strategies can supercharge an organization by fueling growth, disrupting the status quo and winning the minds of employees and customers. T-Mobile for Business celebrates these creative approaches to solving problems and embracing opportunity with its 2022 Unconventional Awards. “These organizations know what it means to think unconventionally. They build and innovate upon successes of the past and shake things up for the customers they serve—just like we do at T-Mobile. They drive their own success,” says Callie Field, president of T-Mobile Business Group. Read on to learn more about this year’s first-place winners.

See the Winners

Innovation in Employee Enablement: Goodwill of North Georgia

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Innovation in Customer Experience: Tennessee State University

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About the Awards

Innovation in Industry: Morehouse College

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Innovation in Industry: Morehouse College

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Innovation in Employee Enablement: Goodwill of North Georgia

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Innovation in Customer Experience: Tennessee State University

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The Award Winners

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, administrators at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, noticed that students were struggling with lectures delivered remotely via videoconferencing systems. “The two-dimensional learning platforms didn’t offer enough collaboration for students,” says Dr. Muhsinah Morris, assistant professor of education at Morehouse. “That led to some students falling behind and losing progress toward their degrees.” Enter Dr. Michael Hodge, then provost of the college, who envisioned a more cutting-edge, technology-based way to address the challenges faced by Morehouse students. His idea was to create a “metaversity”—a virtual reality college campus. Instead of watching lectures on a computer screen, students would be able to immerse themselves in the subject matter, using virtual reality technology to take a molecular view of the human body or to explore the bounds of space. The program debuted with three courses: world history, biology and advanced inorganic chemistry. The results were encouraging: Professors saw boosts in attendance and performance among students. “We’ve seen increases across the board with the types of work products that metaversity students produce outside of the classroom space,” Morris says.

These days, Morehouse is all in on the metaverse. Morris notes that the college is tripling its course offerings and delivering metaversity demonstrations several times a week to interested academic departments—as well as at other higher education institutions. But amid the excitement of this boundary-pushing initiative, Morris says the focus of the metaversity still lies squarely on the students. “The metaverse is a $1.5 trillion industry,” he says. “Any edge or heightened exposure to cutting-edge technologies our students can have helps them be more successful in the workforce.”

Innovation in Employee Enablement

“The system has proven to be a flexible, cost- and time-efficient tool that has made a tremendous impact on the day-to-day success of our business,” says Christain Lupoe, director of technology operations at Goodwill of North Georgia. A key partnership with T-Mobile helped make the digital donation tracker initiative possible. Goodwill of North Georgia was given access to 4G-enabled tablets to digitally record donations—helpful in rural areas with unreliable internet connectivity. “The mission of Goodwill of North Georgia is to put people to work, and it’s at the center of everything we do,” Lupoe says. “We value innovation and know that outside-the-box thinking is what will allow us to continue to grow and serve thousands of job seekers every year.”

At Goodwill of North Georgia, tracking donations used to be a laborious process. Contributions were counted on paper, and recording each one required hands-on work by staff. What’s more, there was always the risk of human error that would further complicate that important record keeping. Now, Goodwill of North Georgia is taking a more modern approach to donation tracking. An automated system allows for instantaneous reporting, which in turn provides real-time information to a centralized database. That data gives the organization’s operations team important details that allow them to better deploy resources around the 45 urban, suburban and rural counties it serves. What’s more, it allows the nonprofit’s marketing team to determine when it needs to ramp up efforts to solicit donations or slow down outreach to allow the organization’s donation team time to catch their breath. “The system has proven to be a flexible, cost- and time-efficient tool that has made a tremendous impact on the day-to-day success of our business,” says Christain Lupoe, director of technology operations at Goodwill of North Georgia.

Tennessee State University

Innovation in Customer Experience

Going forward, TSU aims to create an interdisciplinary minor in esports and build an innovation entrepreneurship center focusing on STEM areas like game design and coding, as well as esports-related skills such as coaching and business management. Being chosen by T-Mobile for Business as an Unconventional Award winner offers TSU more validation for its innovative and decidedly creative approach to addressing the issue of diversity in STEM fields. “This award highlights the educational value of using 5G technology to support esports as a pathway to STEM programs and careers,” Melton says. “Students are rewarded, not punished, for their passion for playing video games.”

Careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have seen incredible growth over the past few decades. But Black, Latino and other minority groups have historically been underrepresented in these fields, according to Pew Research Center. Our educational system plays a crucial role in helping more diverse groups of students develop the skills they need to join the growing STEM workforce. Tennessee State University—a historically Black institution—is taking an innovative approach to help narrow the gap. The school’s academic esports initiative aims to use video games as a crucial steppingstone toward STEM careers. “It offers a career pathway program to get students interested in the behind-the-games work in areas such as coding, programming, game design, business management and entrepreneurship,” says Dr. Robbie K. Melton, associate vice president of the school’s SMART Technology Innovation Center. A state-of-the-art esports center built on cutting-edge 5G technology gives students the tools to dive deeply into gaming. It also helps level the playing field for those who may not have had access to the technology required to participate in esports. Melton notes that video games not only give students an unconventional way to learn more about STEM areas, but also help them learn other important career skills, such as team building and problem-solving.

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Goodwill of North Georgia

Learn more about the winners of the 2022 Unconventional Awards

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But amid the excitement of this boundary-pushing initiative, Morris says the focus of the metaversity still lies squarely on the students. “The metaverse is a $1.5 trillion industry,” he says. “Any edge or heightened exposure to cutting-edge technologies our students can have helps them be more successful in the workforce.”