“System and Method for Quantifying Professional Development” – U.S. Patent No. 11989679 was issued May 21, 2024 listing the IBIT and DIF team of Munir Mandviwalla, Manoj Chacko, and Laurel Miller as inventors.
The patent is on how the PRO platform structures, motivates, and measures student and employee development in universities and corporations. PRO develops students, a goal that all universities have but few have found a way to motivate and systemize beyond course work and GPA. See: “A System to Structure, Measure, and Improve Student Development,” IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.
PRO is housed in IBIT’s Digital Innovation Foundry (DIF), which applies Design Science Research. PRO was the first DIF project, serves as DIF’s anchor tenant, and led to the DIF endowment.
PRO Community, LLC is a 2020 spin-off co-founded by the patent inventors and Niraj Patel with support from Steve Nappi and Niraj Muni in Temple’s Office of Technology Commercialization and Business Development.
San Jose State University’s School of Information Systems and Technology, is the first licensee with more than 2000 student users since 2018. Temple’s Kornberg School of Dentistry, led by Dean Amid Ismail signed on in 2022. University of Scranton’s Kania School of Management led by Dean Mark Higgins and Associate Dean Murli Rajan just signed on.
Earlier versions prior to PRO evolving into a complete product were licensed by Scholastic Corporation, Georgia State University, Loyola University Maryland, and KIPP Philadelphia Schools.
PRO started in Temple University’s Management Information Systems (MIS) department in 2008. Temple MIS is the living lab for the platform, which has impacted more than 4,000 MIS graduates.
