Most days, Emily Yale is moving between the Castleman Building and the School of Business Building on the Storrs campus, learning and testing concepts about entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
The University of Connecticut student is in the process of launching a startup, Land Maverick, and she is tapping the resources of the Schools of Engineering and Business.<\/p>\n
\u201cEntrepreneurship and building a company is a blend between business and engineering with a little luck, uncertainty, and chaos thrown in the mix,\u201d said Yale, of Branford, Connecticut.<\/p>\n
Her development, Land Maverick, is an autonomous robot with several sensors that test the soil and notify landscapers and golf course supervisors about water levels, potential disease, or problem areas.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, Yale said, golf courses pursue a method of over-applying chemicals on their grass, to make sure that disease is never a problem, but this method lacks accuracy, and can cause devastating environmental effects.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, what golf courses do is over apply chemicals, to make sure that they will never have a disease present,\u201d Yale said. \u201cI actually have friends that live on golf courses and they\u2019ll say things like \u2018The superintendent turned my pond purple this year.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Yale has started testing her service with golf course owners across the state. Her subscription-based service is not only more environmentally friendly, but also economically friendly for clients, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only will this technology potentially cut their costs in half, but it will, more importantly, avoid the ineffective use of labor, freeing up personnel, and reducing overtime costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yale is one of the first students in the new Master\u2019s of Engineering in Global Entrepreneurship program\u2014 a joint effort between UConn\u2019s Schools of Engineering and Business, Trinity College, and the University of New Haven.<\/p>\n
Originally, Yale conceived of the project during her time as an undergraduate at Fairfield University, as part of her senior design project.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we started that first robotic unit, we were focused on the agricultural sector, but we learned quickly that golf courses had a greater interest in this new technology,\u201d Yale said.\u00a0 \u201cI can design the coolest, most exciting device in the world, but if it has no customer base, it\u2019s not going places.\u201d<\/p>\n
After joining UConn\u2019s program, Yale worked with faculty on solidifying the market for her product. With 15,000 golf courses in the country, Yale found a target market that has major potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe combination of taking classes in entrepreneurship and engineering, and getting the chance to work with some very seasoned advisers has been a great experience,\u201d Yale said. \u201cThat combination is very unique to UConn, and I\u2019m not sure a lot of schools across the state would be able to pull this kind of program off, because of the resources and network UConn has.\u201d<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, Yale said that she is excited to grow her business in the state of Connecticut. And, she is pleased that she decided to pivot into entrepreneurship.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking back, there\u2019s never been a regret. In the tech startup world, there\u2019s no time for regretting anything,\u201d Yale said. \u201cYou just have to keep moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As one of the first students in the new Master\u2019s of Engineering in Global Entrepreneurship program, Emily Yale is tapping a wide range of resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":155153,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,1731,2076,1862,2225,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2110],"class_list":["post-155106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-entrepreneurship","category-research","category-busn","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-edu-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 02:20:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155106"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155311,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155106\/revisions\/155311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/155153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155106"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=155106"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=155106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}