Summary of Idea
Dickinson has committed to graduating global citizen leaders ready to address the challenges of our age: new technology, environmental sustainability, inequality, demographic shifts, and changing career structures, to name only a few. FutureLab will serve as a campus and community resource that fosters socially responsible innovation, emphasizing the intersection of technology, business, and the greater good.
Imagine —
- Cross-functional teams of students, faculty and staff tackling real-world challenges with partners in Carlisle and around the world
- A network of engaged alumni entrepreneurs, change-makers, and mentors
- A space for collaborative design, visualization, and prototyping
- An agile curriculum that blends academic rigor, just-in-time content, and skill development.
The FutureLab will —
- Serve as a headquarters for sustained relationships with local, regional, national and international community partners
- Enhance the academic program by offering immersive, 4-credit “innovation semesters”
- Teach and facilitate creative collaboration among students, faculty, staff, and our partners
- Build community by developing visionary, real-world solutions.
Social innovation and entrepreneurship require interdisciplinary knowledge, creative problem solving, ethical reasoning, and teamwork. The FutureLab will bring together faculty and staff from science, the arts, humanities, and social sciences, equipping them to engage ethically and creatively with new media and technology. It will provide space for students, alumni, and community partners to learn and work together, creating an engine of practical optimism and change – at Dickinson and in the wider world.
How does your idea relate to or support the college’s strategic framework?
The college’s strategic framework identifies four strategic commitments that will position us to meet “the challenges of our age”: Innovative Education, Cultivating Community, Educating Global Citizen Leaders, and Sustaining our Strength. The FutureLab strengthens each of the four in significant, distinctive ways. In addition, the FutureLab directly engages the college mission to provide “a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives of engaged global citizenship, working for the common good.”
Innovative Education – The FutureLab directly and meaningfully addresses the college’s leading priorities in this area:
- Rigorous education
- Wisdom of the past
- New knowledge
- Contemporary challenges
- Future possibilities
- Ethical Decision-making
- Emerging Technology
- Problem-solving skills.
FutureLab curriculum and activity will center around local, regional, national and international community partnerships that generate reciprocal value. Our collaboration will enrich Dickinson’s involvement with issues that have come to be pillars of our educational program – interdisciplinarity, sustainability, global education, civic engagement, social and economic inclusion, and intercultural competence.
The core of FutureLab’s academic program is an interdisciplinary four-credit “innovation semester” in which campus teams collaborate with community partners organizing, learning, and engaging with real-world challenges. The curriculum will draw essential elements from existing programs in sociology, community engagement, social innovation and entrepreneurship, ethical reasoning, and international business and management. It will also incorporate proven and emerging technologies and practices in computer science, data science, media, the “makerspace movement,” and collaborative design. Students completing an “innovation semester” will earn three course credits for academic work and one internship credit for their work with a community partner.
The agile curriculum and dynamic interaction with partners necessitate responsive and adaptive learning. Alumni, industry, and non-profit partners will work alongside students’ professors to provide insight and mentoring. As students encounter challenges, the FutureLab’s agile curriculum model will facilitate just-in-time skill and knowledge development through in person instruction, online tutorials, workshops and mini-courses. Students will produce – whether by advancing ongoing projects to the next stage of development, building prototypes, or deploying solutions. Regardless, the FutureLab team will ensure that partnerships live beyond short-term, semester-long engagement. Stakeholders will continue to have voice after semester’s end. Partnerships and projects will continue to be evaluated and supported.
Last but not least, the FutureLab’s combination of dynamic, innovative pedagogy and inclusive, pragmatic engagement will help the college recruit excellent, diverse teacher-scholars and students. On the latter, research has shown that all students benefit from experiencing the real-world relevance of their educations. Moreover, students who are first in their families to college often gravitate to academic programs that include practical demonstrations of value.
Cultivating Community –The FutureLab directly and meaningfully addresses the college’s leading priorities in this area:
- An inclusive, vibrant residential community
- A sense of belonging and pride
- Opportunities to work across difference
- Practice having their assumptions challenged.
The FutureLab’s emphasis on social entrepreneurship and innovation will demonstrate the practical value of Dickinson’s useful education in the liberal arts and sciences. This demonstration will foster a sense of community identity: Dickinsonians are value-driven, forward-thinking, agile, and ready for the future. In this way, FutureLab participants and their projects will embody President Ensign’s vision of cultivating liberally-educated “extension agents.” FutureLab “innovation semester” students will foster a sense of community with one another, with their partners, with alumni mentors, and with the broader population of students on campus who are participating in community research and service learning.
In addition, the FutureLab’s physical space will serve as a dynamic hub of creative collaboration. Not only will it showcase ongoing FutureLab projects and the resources of the Media Center and Makery, it will also provide the campus open, reconfigurable workspaces inspired by best practices for innovation space design. Creative collaboration fosters community by enabling people to work across difference and to discover shared vision. For example, the FutureLab will host new and existing programs.
- id@d [existing] - a competitive platform for entrepreneurial students to pursue an idea that they are passionate about. Working in interdisciplinary teams, and in collaboration with alumni mentors, students develop their idea over three rounds of competition to create a business plan canvas. Winners receive seed money and guidance bringing their projects to fruition.
- Service Learning / Community Based Research Courses [existing] - SL/CBR courses currently leverage resources and experience from across campus. The FutureLab would provide space, centralized resources and a hub of activity for building and sustaining relationships and projects with community partners.
- Design Your Future [new] - class-wide workshops co-hosted by the Center for Advising, Internships, and Lifelong Career Development in which expert facilitators help students use techniques of design and futures thinking to develop visions and plans – as individuals and in service of the common good. In the same way that first-year students participate in Orientation, sophomores can participate in an immersive program of “Re-orientation,” and seniors in “Launch week.”
Educating Global Citizen Leaders – The FutureLab directly and meaningfully addresses the college’s leading priorities in this area:
- A culture of civic engagement
- Cross-campus collaboration and connection
- Integration of global mindset, sustainability, interdisciplinarity, and civic learning
- Innovative opportunities to collaborate in addressing the challenges of our age.
To engage and educate global citizen leaders is the essence of the FutureLab’s mission. The FutureLab’s emphasis on social innovation and entrepreneurship will expand opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to pursue civic engagement inside and outside the classroom. FutureLab’s curriculum and its “innovation semesters” will focus on collaboration with partners in Carlisle and around the world, enabling them to gain firsthand experience tackling the challenges of our age. Moreover, the FutureLab team will make it a priority to foster sustained partnerships that generate reciprocal value and benefit, a priority that requires dedicated staff and space to accomplish.
The FutureLab curriculum will emphasize interdisciplinary knowledge, creative problem solving, ethical reasoning, and social and environmental justice. It will incorporate current and emerging practices, such as systems theory, design and future thinking, agile processes, and the art of “tinkering” in the “Makerspace” movement. One distinctive feature of the FutureLab collective is the involvement of Dickinson faculty in computing and data science along with campus experts in emerging media from the Media Center and Makery. Increasingly, digital literacy, computing and technology play important roles in understanding, engaging, and addressing the challenges of our age. Working together, the FutureLab team will provide new and sophisticated opportunities to enhance digital and computational literacy, literacy that will be enriched by the contributions of experts in ethics, sociology, and entrepreneurship. The FutureLab will cultivate digital literacy with a purpose.
Sustaining our Strength – The FutureLab directly and meaningfully addresses the college’s leading priorities in this area:
- Stewardship of physical, financial, and human resources
- Deepening ties with alumni
- Promoting staff development
- Earning recognition and acclaim for Dickinson’s innovative liberal-arts education.
The FutureLab will include deep alumni involvement from the outset, through implementation, and beyond. Alumni with entrepreneurial, for-profit, and non-profit experience will help shape the FutureLab curriculum, design the physical space, and identify additional partners and mentors. Once the program is in place, alumni will interact regularly with students and faculty, providing both just-in-time sessions on urgent topics and ongoing mentoring on projects in their areas of expertise. An alumni, faculty, staff and business advisory board will provide regular guidance on trends in social entrepreneurship and the future direction of the FutureLab.
In addition, the FutureLab team will provide expertise in creative collaboration for staff development across the campus. Many of the same techniques that drive effective social innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology design are also valuable tools in day-to-day operations in other fields. Techniques associated with “design thinking” for example, have migrated from Apple and the design firm IDEO to the broader business world, social entrepreneurship, higher education. The FutureLab team can help Dickinson staff make better meetings and better projects across campus.
Finally, the FutureLab represents a bold new initiative that will lend itself to advertising the college’s unique strengths and values. The FutureLab fosters interdisciplinary work on local, regional, national and global challenges, and projects will emphasize the importance of civic engagement and sustainable systems.
What partnerships, on campus and off campus, do you envision?
Academic partnerships on campus will include faculty and staff from the Center for Civic Learning and Engagement, Sociology, International Business and Management, Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Computer Science, Ethics, Data Science, Careers, the Media Center and the Makery. These partnerships will involve rotating faculty and/or staff dedicated to the FutureLab for limited terms. Outside of these appointments, faculty and staff from other areas will be recruited based on their areas of expertise and the needs of specific projects and partners. More broadly, the FutureLab will also partner with individual faculty to support projects and courses that include civic engagement, service learning and community-based research components. In this context, students completing FutureLab “innovation semesters” could serve as “FutureLab Associates” in roles similar to Dickinson’s Writing and QR associates.
Off-campus partnerships will include non-profit organizations, community organizations, local governments, and student, faculty and alumni entrepreneurs. While many of these partners will be local to Carlisle, others may be affiliated with Dickinson study abroad sites, connected via faculty, staff, alumni or student contacts, or they may be distributed open communities that harness expertise via the internet, connecting Dickinson and the world in pursuit of the greater good.
Some partnerships that may serve as examples--
- FarmData collaboration between the Computer Science program, the College Farm, FarmOS (farmOS.org) and The Non-Profit FOSS Institute (npfi.org) to develop the next generation application for data management on small non-profit organic farms.
- Urban tree-canopy GIS mapping with Carlisle Park & Recreation to identify and correct inequity in urban tree planting
- System Change Workshops with Carlisle’s Partnership for Better Health (Becca Raley ’94) to redefine challenges such as homelessness, addiction, and rural health
The prominent presence of a vibrant collaborative learning and doing space on campus will amplify the social entrepreneurial spirit already present in the Dickinson student body. It is not difficult to imagine partnerships between the FutureLab and existing student and community service organizations such as the Idea Fund, the Dickinson Innovation Competition, ALLARM, Carlisle Mosaics, the Northside Project, Carlisle Borough and Project Share. Partnerships like these and others will accelerate progress and engage a broader cross-section of the student population.
How will your idea positively affect the education of Dickinson students?
The presence and activity of the FutureLab on campus will have a positive impact on a significant number of Dickinson students each year. We expect that 25 students per term will enroll in the immersive, 4-credit “innovation semester,” and an estimated 100-150 additional students per year will engage with FutureLab in other SL/CBR courses. As many as 65-75% of all students will be impacted by FutureLab though the Center for Advising, Internships, and Lifelong Career Development's Design Your Future” programs (See earlier “Cultivating Community” entry.)
Students who enroll in a FutureLab “innovation semester” will receive a sustained, immersive, educational experience similar to current mosaic programs, though perhaps with even more opportunities for boundary-crossing work. Dickinson mosaics organize courses across themes and encourage cross-course fertilization. In a FutureLab “innovations semester”, rigorous academic content and pedagogy will be blended into a seamless, interdisciplinary educational experience. Without the artificial borders of course units, students will learn and be mentored in the pursuit of outcomes that are useful and directly tied to the greater good – now and in the future.
In addition, the FutureLab will enrich the educational experience of students enrolled in courses that include civic engagement, service learning and/or community-based research. Some of these students will benefit from access to FutureLab’s open, reconfigurable, collaborative workspaces, others will benefit from FutureLab’s facilitation of creative collaboration exercises, and others still will benefit from access to student “FutureLab Associates.” After having completed a FutureLab “innovation semester”, students will be invited to apply for positions similar to the college’s existing Writing and Quantitative Reasoning Associates. “FutureLab Associates” will serve as specialized Teaching Assistants in the classroom, and their deep familiarity with FutureLab will ideally position them to connect students and faculty to resources and expertise available through the broader FutureLab network.
Finally, FutureLab will enhance educational experiences by fostering both summer and academic year internships for students across campus. Dickinson is committed to securing “internships for all.” At present, the vast majority of students pursue summer internships because they face challenges related to course schedules, transportation, and opportunity “fit.” As the FutureLab network grows, it will bridge these obstacles, and FutureLab’s strategic partnerships with the Center of Civic Learning and Engagement, and the Center for Career, Advising, and Lifelong Career Development will help make the new range of possibilities available to all Dickinson students.
How will your idea positively impact the world beyond Dickinson’s campus?
The FutureLab’s core purpose is to generate positive impact in the word beyond Dickinson’s campus. It will produce immediate and on-going impact for community partners through a focus on generating reciprocal value and benefit. Partnerships between academic institutions and community members often suffer from intermittent and discontinued relationships because courses, students, faculty, and campus priorities fluctuate and shift. By bringing together a team of full-time dedicated faculty and staff, creating student cohorts, training student employees, and engaging student interns, the FutureLab will provide resources and infrastructure that sustain responsible relationships with community partners over time, in Carlisle, and around the world.
Today and tomorrow, our graduates face conditions that increasingly demand workers, thinkers and leaders who recognize that all problems ultimately involve issues of social, environmental and economic justice. With the benefit of a FutureLab experience, Dickinson graduates will have gained real-world knowledge and experiences that prepare them to think in collaborative, creative, inclusive and ethical ways. They will be equipped to approach “the challenges of our age” not only from a perspective grounded in profit and shareholder value, from disciplinary silos best suited to neatly bounded problems, or with the untested ideals of the ivory tower. Instead, they will be ready to employ realistic, optimistic “and/both thinking” to operate in a world where economic sustainability and social value are intrinsically connected.
Do you anticipate resource needs to prepare a detailed proposal if selected as a finalist? If so, please describe.
Yes.
The FutureLab will be distinctive because it draws on some of Dickinson’s unique strengths, whether the ethics and computing for the greater good threads in our computer science program, our deep network of local partners, our global network of “Dickinson In” centers, the SINE program, or the international business and management major. However, our team will benefit from the opportunity to consult with thought leaders in ethical technology and colleagues at institutions that have established successful incubator/accelerator models and/or outstanding media labs. Our team proposes to send 1-2 members to visit Middlebury, Colgate, Wesleyan, and Haverford, to tour facilities and meet with staff. While there, these 1-2 delegates will facilitate teleconference meetings that include these institutions’ on-site staff, the FutureLab campus planning team, and alumni partners. Meetings will focus on planning the curriculum and structure of the FutureLab, investigating initial community partnerships, securing mentoring commitments from alumni, and forming an ongoing advisory board for the FutureLab.
Estimated Budget
$700 travel (1200 miles @ 58 cents/mile)
$750 lodging (3 nights @ $250/night)
$600 meals (delegates and on-site center directors)
$450 Carlisle travel stipend for FutureLab alumni lead partner
$2500