{"id":6652,"date":"2013-10-31T12:10:35","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T18:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin2013\/?p=6652"},"modified":"2013-10-31T12:10:35","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T18:10:35","slug":"innovation-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2013\/10\/innovation-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"Innovation Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c<\/span>The Colorado College Plan: Building on the Block\u201d describes the Innovation institute as a place where students and faculty will engage in \u201cbig picture thinking\u201d and collaborate \u201cto produce real-world answers to complex questions.\u201d The Institute has a proven foundation. The four elements that will form its core \u2014 the State of the Rockies Project, Venture Grants, the Big Idea, and the Public Interest Fellowship Program \u2014 are venues in which students are already successfully exploring how to realize their ideas. What\u2019s most exciting to us as faculty is the opportunity to teach students how to innovate and, in the process, connect the intellectual and experiential threads that underlie all these ventures.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re especially thrilled that the Innovation Institute will provide a space where students become more intentional about the processes of innovation, whether they\u2019re planning travels to China to explore the impact of local culture and legislation on the treatment of animals \u2028(Nicole White \u201914<\/b>) or studying \u201crhizomic urbanism\u201d in post-industrial cityscapes in the Bay Area (Daniel Alvarado \u201913<\/b>). The big myth is that innovation happens magically or comes to us naturally. In fact, recent research tells us that students can actually learn the processes of innovation with the appropriate mentoring. The Innovation Institute will be a place where faculty collaborate actively with students. Current examples of work that could be supported in the Innovation Institute include studying art and commerce in contemporary musical theater (Doron Mitchell \u201914 <\/b>with Professor Ryan Ba\u00f1agale) or preparing to carry out an anthropological survey in Costa Rica (Fiona Horner \u201915<\/b> and Maia Wikler \u201915<\/b> with Professor Esteban G\u00f3mez).<\/p>\n

Ideas don\u2019t fall out of the sky. When students study innovation, they learn what current research tells us: for example, that creativity is most often a collective, rather than a solitary pursuit, that innovation thrives with the skillful crafting of constraints, and that (as sociologist Ronald Burt argues) we are most \u201csusceptible\u201d to novel ideas when our networks span structural gaps between disciplines.<\/p>\n

Students and faculty can work together in the Innovation Institute to make the paths to innovation tangible. While \u201cthink tanks\u201d at large Research I universities may focus on faculty research, Colorado College is working on something radical, something novel. We\u2019re endeavoring to create an environment where students, mentored by researching faculty, grow their understanding of innovative processes. They need to develop that second sense that will allow them to identify interesting problems and develop creative solutions. They\u2019ll learn how to build tangible bridges between their liberal arts education and their work in the world, a world that increasingly requires entrepreneurial skills and innovative thinking.<\/p>\n

Jane Hilberry, left, is professor of English.<\/i>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Re Evitt, right, is associate professor of English and associate dean of the college.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Colorado College Plan: Building on the Block\u201d describes the Innovation institute as a place where students and faculty will engage in \u201cbig picture thinking\u201d and collaborate \u201cto produce real-world answers to complex questions.\u201d The Institute has a proven foundation. The four elements that will form its core \u2014 the State of the Rockies Project,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[44],"class_list":["post-6652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-november-2013","tag-ideas-into-action"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2013\/10\/IMG_8696.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}