Stafford Marquardt has a strange double major.

Medicine and marketing aren’t usually thought of as complementary disciplines, but Marquardt, a microbiology and entrepreneurship senior, has found the perfect internship for his unusual course of study at OU’s Center for the Creation of Economic Wealth.

For three years, the CCEW has been uniting students with scientists to practice their entrepreneurship skills as they work to take technologies from concept to completion.

Each semester, the center’s staff selects student interns who work in groups of four to promote the intellectual property being developed by scientists at OU. Interns gain hands-on experience in marketing, communications, financing and research as they work to promote new technologies, according to program manager Mariana Barrientos.

“It is not until students actually implement the theory that they learn in class that they can really learn,” Barrientos said.

This spring, Marquardt, who has been with CCEW for three semesters, is working with his team on the development of a vaccine that could protect people from the tropical disease dengue fever.

The project has been a challenge. When the group was originally presented with the idea, they were told the vaccine would protect against West Nile virus, but with further research, scientists decided the vaccine was better suited for dengue fever.

Marquardt said the diversity present in his group and in the program allows them to think outside of the box.

“CCEW strives to replicate the diversity that would be in a business setting,” Marquardt said. “Seeing the ways that people in different majors work is really neat, and it’s interesting to see people explain things differently. You come across potholes that you may not be able to answer without help from someone else.”

In addition to their work on specific projects, interns are expected to expand their network of personal contacts and sharpen their networking skills. Interns are exposed to people they would not normally interact with by attending lectures and seminars led by different speakers in the business world, Barrientos said.

But OU students aren’t the only people who benefit from the program.

University Vice President for Technology Development and Business Development Daniel Pullin said CCEW is essential to OU as well as the state of Oklahoma. The center is geared toward working with students who want to learn how to build enterprises for Oklahoma’s future.

“I think CCEW is emblematic of the culture of innovation that permeates the university of Oklahoma such that were able to combine our key strengths in research, teaching and service to the community for the betterment of Oklahoma and the nation,” Pullin said.

Pullin said this semester CCEW interns are working on a project in collaboration with OU’s K20 Center, an educational research and development program at OU.

CCEW has partnered with K20 to create a program called Digital Native Learning, which attempts to engage young students with interactive, digitally based learning tools like educational video games.

Interns working on the Digital Native Learning project have had the opportunity to identify funding sources for the venture, apply for grants and work with a research team to build the operation.

“CCEW isn’t like any internship I had experienced prior to working here,” Marquardt said. “It seems from my previous experience interning with a software company that interns sort of fall into performing the same tasks, like making copies or filing papers. With CCEW, you’re not treated as an intern as much as an integral part of the program”.

CCEW’s primary focus is the commercialization of OU technologies, but the entire state stands to benefit from its efforts. Although past semesters’ projects were concentrated entirely on research performed at OU, the program’s directors are starting to look outside OU for opportunities. The vaccine project that Marquardt and his team are working on is a collaboration with the Oklahoma City-based Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Pullin said CCEW’s ability to work with OMRF has given the center the ability to impact commercial opportunities beyond the university.