For Students, By Students: Smith Student Looks to Reshape Campus Engagement

By James Consoli

At the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, students don’t have to wait until graduation to make their mark. Just ask Aiden Polinsky ’27.

The accounting and finance double major, alongside his peer and childhood friend Jacob Feigenblum ’27, has turned ideas into reality through Smith’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, leveraging classroom concepts, faculty guidance and peer collaboration. Polinsky is the founder of CampusAI, an AI chatbot for student life scheduled for an exclusive UMD launch this fall, powered by over 70 master’s students.

He also holds a leadership role at Connyct, a college-only, social platform connecting students to events, clubs and opportunities through short-form videos and an events feed. In that role, he oversees 120 undergraduates from 40 universities as interns, with participation from over 50 Smith students.

“We realized that students weren’t disengaged—they were just overwhelmed,” Polinsky says. “There was no single place to find what was happening, and we knew we could build something better if we started with students themselves.”

The path hasn’t been accidental. Polinsky has taken a proactive approach, cold-emailing professors, meeting with deans, and taking full advantage of the connections and resources available to Smith students.

“Smith gave me the opportunity of a lifetime,” says Polinsky. “Renowned professors teach at a university so that they can help students like me who take the initiative to build. Taking advantage of that resource has been the best decision of my life and has already made me connections for a lifetime.”

Faculty have been instrumental in supporting Polinsky and Feigenblum’s personal and professional development.

Smith professors Tejwansh Singh Anand, Balaji Padmanabhan and Mary Beth Furst have each played a role in mentoring the young founders. Both in and out of the classroom, they’ve offered guidance across areas ranging from data architecture to AI ethics to marketing strategy.

“I was impressed with Aiden’s passion and his ability to engage with students and create a win-win situation for them,” says Anand, Clinical Professor of Practice and the academic director for the MS in Information Systems program. “He has boundless energy.”

As the projects grow, so does their Smith connection. Throughout the rapid pace of growth, Aiden and Jacob continue to credit the students working alongside them.

“This isn’t a traditional internship,” says Feigenblum. “We’re not assigning people generic tasks—we’re asking, ‘What do you want to build?’ And we’ve found that when people believe in the mission, they go all in.”

Names like Sachin Jadhav MS ’25, Aman Sahu MS ’26, Dhanush Sukruth MS ’25, Supriya Kadam MS ’26, Sarang Shibu ME ’25, and Yashvi Vora MS ’25 come up again and again—graduate students who have taken on leadership roles in data, backend systems and early AI development.

“This internship has given me the freedom to explore, take initiative, and learn in real time,” says Vora, an Information Systems student. “As someone early in her career, having that kind of trust and ownership has helped me grow in ways I did not expect.”

Polinsky says working alongside such highly skilled peers has pushed him to rethink his position—not as a leader, but as a learner.

“These aren’t interns,” says Polinsky. “They’re like mentors. Like, I’m sitting on a call with some of these guys and just taking notes for thirty minutes because they’re master-level computer engineers, and I am a finance and accounting major.”

But even with all of the fast-moving parts, Polinsky says the vision has remained the same from day one, and further proof that at Smith, ambition doesn’t have to wait for a diploma.

“This is what college should feel like—students building something real together, with faculty behind us, and a purpose bigger than just another app,” Polinsky says.