Innovation is Our Mindset
Innovation at Unity Environmental University is a mission-driven, yet flexible mindset that rewards and supports intentional risk-taking. We create powerful new experiences and change higher education in order to address the evolving needs of society and the sustainability of the environment.
Guiding Principles for Influencing Innovative Behavior
- We support innovation by financial backing and human resources.
- We celebrate and respect those pursuing innovation.
- We celebrate the endeavor whether it is success or failure. You are not alone, we at Unity value innovation.
- All members of Unity Environmental University are contributors and supporters of innovation, and we embrace innovation in the face of perceived or real consequences.
- We regularly examine and evaluate innovation at Unity Environmental University.
Specific Structures and Policies that Challenge Innovation
- Broad Perspectives – Additional viewpoints need to be effectively integrated into strategic planning, recruitment, and curriculum development.
- Change – Resistance to new structures, departments, and policies, along with territorialism, can lead to discounting new ideas.
- Evaluation – Better alignment of evaluation practices and policies to job description, institutional goals, and innovation metrics.
- Time – More guidance and specific metrics are needed to quantify expectations and reallocate human resources in service to the future of the University.
- Resources – Dedicated financial resources to support new ideas.
The Caterpillar and the Butterfly
By now, everyone at Unity Environmental University is very familiar with the “Life-Cycle of Higher Education” analogy as told by President Khoury:
“The higher education industry is like a cartoon caterpillar that enters its cocoon to begin an almost miraculous transformation into a very different being. During the months and even years in the cocoon, the caterpillar of higher education studies, reviews, researches, plans, and imagines its future. It studies every industry best practice, conducts listening tours, and audits itself until it understands itself as well as any institution can.
After investing a staggering amount of time and truly significant resources, the caterpillar finally emerges from its transformative retreat, looks in the mirror, and smiles appreciatively at the very slightly more colorful and mildly more interesting, but largely unchanged, caterpillar smiling back at itself in the mirror.
As it begins to emerge from its cocoon and looks to the future, the Unity butterfly may not be fully mature, but it is clearly no longer a traditional higher education caterpillar.”
