ABSTRACT
Universities worldwide are increasingly investing in academic innovation centers that are designed to encourage their students to pursue careers focused on innovation and technology. This chapter explores the educational opportunities of these academic innovation centers during crisis situations by documenting how an academic innovation center at Florida State University - the Innovation Hub - was able to encourage university students to engage in creative problem solving through design thinking, emerging technologies, and experiential learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of these efforts demonstrate that academic innovation centers, during times of global crisis, have a unique opportunity to lead by example, enhancing their educational impact by connecting students directly with real-world challenges as creative problem solvers with the power to improve their communities. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021. All rights reserved.