Priorities:University of Notre Dame Student Priorities
Overview
Council for Academic Leadership & Innovation (CALI)
Description
The Council for Academic Leadership & Innovation (CALI) is a collaborative effort among students and faculty from all four Colleges at the University of Notre Dame. The council will represent departments and major clubs & organizations with students and dedicated faculty members. Representatives will work at the departmental, college, and university levels to encourage the wealth of acamedic opportunities on campus. CALI's long-term mission is to promote a campus culture of innovation as Notre Dame prepares to expand to the West Coast and Silicon Valley. In the short term, goals include creating a platform for communicaton, making the new Entrepreneurship Minor accessible to students from all colleges, and breaking down barriers to an interdisciplinary education. In accord with these goals, CALI will be housed in the Office of the Provost so as not to favor any one college over the others. If the acronym "CALI" brought to mind a culture of innovation and forward thinking, then you already have a sense of the purpose of this leadership structure.
Problem Addressed
Implementation
Future Direction
Entrepreneurship Minor
Description
We would like to work with other students and our administration to expand the current Entrepreneurship Minor to be accessible to students of each College: Business, Science, Arts and Letters, and Engineering. This minor will offer classes in entrepreneurship, innovation, and design thinking. It will also create infrastructure to disseminate information regarding entrepeneurship/innovative activities, clubs and programs. Participation in the minor will make candidates for internships or jobs more attractive with the development of skills in creative and design thinking.
Problem Addressed
Entrepreneurial and innovative thinking are not unique to a business education and as such resources to develop these skills should not be limited to business students. Currently on campus, we have a deficiency of non-business entrepreneurial courses/activities in combination with little to no availability for non-business students to take a business course. This results in students being pushed away or shut out of developing skills important to many career paths. Further, for those students that wish to pursue these entrepreneurial activities, it would have to be on an extracurricular basis. As busy as students are with their own courseload and often College-specific extracurricular activities, it is hard to find time and effort to participate in entrepreneurial activities. Allowing students to earn a minor will provide greater incentive to put in the extra time to develop the skills.
Implementation
In order to implement this idea, we must overcome the barriers of revenue and communication. First, revenue is tied to each business student in a business class while there is none tied to a non-business student. And second, there are high walls erected between each College, preventing communication and collaboration. In order to solve both of these issues, we propose housing the Entrepreneurship Minor under the umbrella of the Provost's Office. The current Dean of the College of Science, Dr. Gregory Crawford, is in a transition to becoming an Associate Provost with an interest in Entrepreneurship tied to Silicon Valley. Using this connection, we hope to work with Dean Crawford to prevent the minor from being housed under one of the four Colleges. By doing this, revenue will not be tied down and there will be a central form of communication. To further ensure continued conversation, we also hope to enact a formalized leadership structure that encompasses students and faculty among each College. This idea is addressed above. In terms of creating the body of the Entrepreneurship Minor, we hope to utilize what has already been established and if needed, add other courses or workshops that have a greater focus on non-business subjects. This will allow the minor to truly be open to all disciplines.
Future Direction
Before implementing this big idea, we need to make sure that the supporting structures are already in place. To do this, we will work closely with Dean Crawford and the deans of the other Colleges in order to develop a leadership framework. With this framework in place, we can work with the current Entrepreneurship Minor's administration to expand it to cover all four colleges. Then, we will work with our peers and faculty to integrate this minor into other Colleges by shaping current courses or programs to fit into entrepreneurial/innovative thinking. Finally and if needed, we will develop new courses and programs that may address entrepreneurship or innovation from a different lens that may appeal more to the students and faculty of each College.
Innovation Beyond Entrepreneurship
Description
Problem Addressed
Implementation
Future Direction
miNDspace
Description
We will transform or create a series of innovation spaces across campus, uniquely catering to students from all Colleges and Departments. The “mission” of these spaces will be promoted through a miNDspace board(s), on which will be posted a new real-world problem every month. Students will be able to come, think, and post their creative solutions. At the end of every month, we will compile all of the postings to a website so all of campus can be inspired by the brilliance of their peers.
Problem Addressed
This initiative seeks to inspire an overall culture of innovation on campus, promote unity and collaboration between Colleges, and address the lack of innovation spaces open to and utilized by students of all majors.
Implementation
After deciding on the most effective locations and gathering feedback on exactly what resources students of each discipline need and want, we will seek to implement this program by focusing on the following goals:
- Introduce all students to the concept of an “innovation space” and how it is relevant to them
- At least one commonly utilized innovation space per College or discipline
- Inspired new ideas and conversations between students about real-world problems
Future Direction
With the beginning of this endeavor, our main hope is to have more students exposed to and comfortable with the idea of innovation as it applies to their own ambitions. More concrete future goals we have for the first year include: Repeated successful miNDspace board postings, a monitored increase in student utilization of at least 1 innovation space, and initial positive feedback about miNDspace initiative as a whole.
Over the next several years, we hope to see this project contribute to the emergence of an innovation culture at Notre Dame, with more progressive creative thinking expected from students in all fields. Within three years, we hope that the student body will embrace the miNDspace board postings and grow to appreciate the challenge of design thinking and problem solving that these posts present. Finally, we hope that common use of several innovation spaces will be integrated into the daily lives and work of students here.