UConn senior Abigail Koval is adamant on making her mark through her innovative and daring projects. As a former Maker’s Specialist and a recently promoted project manager of the Innovation Zone, Koval dedicates her time to mentoring first-year students, helping them channel their creativity for the greater good. And she has significant firsthand experience to share.
“I just want to focus all my efforts on making a difference,” says Koval.
Koval ’26 (BUS) began her journey at UConn as a biomedical engineering major but later realized that her true passion lies in business management. After changing majors to business management and administration, Koval quickly used her strengths to develop a more efficient and proactive sustainability strategy for UConn Storrs.
“I noticed a critical flaw with waste segregation because people passing by with plastic water bottles would not stop to make sure their trash was going in the right bin,” says Koval. “That’s just money going down the drain, that could be put to better use.”
As a way to make recycling easier and more appealing to students, Koval and her team (including engineering students Anny Zheng ’26, Jennifer Weng ’26, and Virginia Weng ‘26) came up with the idea to provide an incentive for students who properly sort their waste. Thus began Project Raccoon, an initiative involving unique waste bins for recyclable waste that stand out among the rest. All waste put in the bins would be redeemed to raise money.
“All the money that we collect would just go back to the students through funding for scholarships,” says Koval.
Her unique twist to this idea is what appealed to the Office of Sustainability (OS), who awarded the Project Raccoon team with a grant through the Environmental and Social Sustainability Grants Program.
Koval’s goal is to use the grant to further expand on her project to different parts of the Storrs campus. As of spring 2025, she and her team have successfully gathered over 5,000 plastic bottles.
The journey to get here, however, was not easy, Koval says.
“I’m not gonna lie, at first I was a little bit discouraged as we were not able to get people to agree that our idea was different from the rest,” she says. “After a lot of pleading and several emails, we managed to get a space at the Central Warehouse where we could place our bins.”
Keeping her hopes high, her team continued to network with different organizations at the UConn Foundation and residence halls on campus to expand their project and begin their testing phase.
To date, Project Raccoon has diverted over 5,000 plastic bottles from landfill.
“We still needed raw data to prove the changes we were making, and so by diversifying our locations we were set to improve our chances of success,” Koval says.
Despite their incredible hard work and monetary investment into the project, the team faced a number of setbacks, including last-minute drops from events and restrictions on where they could place their bins, which they had to overcome.
“I think it’s the critical thinking skills and a strong drive to make it work one way or the other that allowed us to find success in our project, and I thank my time and experience at the Innovation Zone for teaching me those skills,” Koval says.
When asked about her experience at the Innovation Zone as a mentor, Koval mentions how much she enjoys working with like-minded people with incredibly unique ideas.
“I think the biggest misconception is that you need to be some type of engineering major to join the Innovation Zone, but we welcome people with all types of majors with different goals,” she says. This allows for people to explore outside of their comfort zone and learn from each other’s experiences. Even as a mentor, Koval finds inspiration from other projects and hopes she can share her drive and passion with her students.
Koval also finds inspiration outside of the Innovation Zone through a clothing business she started as a sophomore. Her clothing business is what allowed her to truly experience the reality of business as a founder of a start-up.
Her business, Dropout Collections, was influenced by her dramatic shift from biomedical engineering to business management and administrations. Starting the company helped her realize what she truly enjoyed.
“Before I invested in the start-up company, I actually pretended that I was already a business student even though I was transitioning from a different major, and I would ask people for feedback on whether they would get merch like this and how much they would pay for it,” Koval says. She added that the legwork is what allowed her to continue developing her business in a strategic manner and apply her skills that she learned through the Innovation Zone and her major.
Along with her clothing business and Project Raccoon, Koval aspires to use her ambitions to motivate others to make an impact in whatever they are passionate about.
“It doesn’t matter how much of an impact you make at once, as those little changes eventually add up and produce the final picture,” she says.
Month of Discovery
October is the Month of Discovery, when undergraduates are introduced to the wealth of research and innovation opportunities at UConn. This month, enjoy profiles of outstanding undergraduate innovators on UConn Today, attend a full slate of programming on campus and online, and register for Discovery Quest to launch your undergraduate experience to new heights.
Students interested in learning more about research and innovation opportunities at UConn can check out the series of events offered as part of the Month of Discovery. Come to Research Connections on Thursday, Oct. 16, to learn how to get involved in UConn research. The Experience Innovation Expo (Monday, Oct. 27) at the Werth Institute is a great opportunity to get inspired and discover the wide range of programs for entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity at UConn.
