Innovation at Unity

What is Innovation at Unity Environmental University?

Innovation at Unity Environmental University is a mission-driven, yet flexible mindset that rewards and supports intentional risk-taking.

We create powerful new learning 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

1. We support innovation with financial backing and human resources.
2. We celebrate and respect those pursuing innovation.
3. We celebrate the endeavor whether it is success or failure. You are not alone, we at Unity value innovation.
4. All members of Unity Environmental University are contributors and supporters of innovation, and we embrace innovation in the face of perceived or real consequences.
5. We regularly examine and evaluate innovation at Unity Environmental University.

Specific Structures and Policies that Challenge Innovation

1. Broad Perspectives – Should be more effectively integrated into strategic planning, recruitment, and curriculum development.
2. Change – Resistance to new structures, departments, and policies, along with territorialism, can lead to discounting new ideas.
3. Evaluation – Better alignment of evaluation practices and policies to job description, institutional goals, and innovation metrics.
4. Time – More guidance and specific metrics are needed to quantify expectations and reallocate human resources in service to the future of the University.
5. 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 investment of a staggering amount of time and truly significant resources, the higher education 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.

In 2014, the Unity College (now Unity Environmental University) Board of Trustees adopted “Building a Beacon,” the ambitious strategic plan that called for an infrastructural framework that would provide Unity with a platform from which to leap forward. As it transitioned from Building a Beacon to the next strategic plan, Unity Environmental University found itself with the financial, human, facilities, IT, and policy infrastructure it needed to realize the next evolution of the University.

As it begins to emerge from its cocoon and looks to the future, the Unity Environmental University butterfly may not be fully mature, but it is increasingly clear to those who know higher education best, that Unity Environmental University is clearly no longer a traditional higher education caterpillar.