I have just sat on the selection panel for two prospective members of the Changemaker consortium. Just to be clear, some universities that are presented to the selection panels don’t get selected, but the process of getting to this point is rigorous. The universities that want to be members have to complete a self-evaluation that is then verified by AshokaU staff and other members of the Changemaker consortium through a site visit. Letters outlining the strength and weaknesses of the proposals are sent to the senior leadership teams, who have the opportunity to check any mistakes, and to implement any of the recommendations before the interview stage.
The interviews are conducted by Change Leaders from existing AshokaU campuses and people closely associated with AshokaU like social entrepreneurs involved in higher education or charitable foundations with an interest in higher education. Two or three panels are convened, and the applicant campus change leaders are asked dozens of questions about the leadership, the curriculum and the community aspects of their institution. The panels independently score the quality of the institutions’ commitment to ‘everyone a Changemaker world’. All the panellists gather together without the applicants and *under the silent scrutiny of the AshokaU observers, the panellists debate whether they agree, with ‘80% confidence, that the institution will make a unique and substantial contribution to the aims of AshokaU’. Even those universities that are obvious candidates get a substantial debate because every campus is so different. In the selection process I have just contributed to (and no, I’m not going to tell you who the universities are and what the outcome was!) had two very different universities. One is a small university with many privileged but highly engaged students working in some very inspiring innovation spaces with the support of talented and experienced adjunct faculty who are creating some very compelling initiatives. The other was a huge institution with dozens of campuses serving many very poor communities, with a wide range of study options- from skills based vocational courses through to PhDs. These students are predominantly working as well as studying or studying to get a job, and don’t have ‘changing the world’ as a personal ambition. Many students are studying from prison, very few have time for high levels of volunteering even though they are probably making significant contributions to their neighbourhoods. One university is focussed on students doing great things for other people and the other is focussed on those less well off in the first place. One is highly resourced with talent and funding to encourage degree programmes to invest in Changemaker initiatives, the other is working primarily from direct involvement in the communities themselves, raising ambition and showing alternatives that can work. One Changemaker group is working around the existing university structures to effect change, as an internal change consultancy whereas the other is helping the university rediscover its original social purpose in some of the most deprived neighbourhoods of its country. Such is the diversity of the Changemaker campuses, community based colleges serving some of the most deprived people in the world alongside small, elite or specialist universities creating leaders and shapers of future society. This diversity of institutional model creates the problem of comparing apples and oranges. How do you judge between a group that has all the advantages of talent and resource that a well-funded university has, with highly motivated students with lots of free time and a group that are trying to achieve the same with no additional resource, with students whose ambitions are focussed on themselves and their families and have no time to contribute to someone else’s welfare? The comparison is not really between the type or quality of students, or between the quality or resources that the lecturers and staff bring to each university. It isn’t even really about the level of commitment of the president or vice chancellor. The comparison is to be made between the extent to which the Changemaker team intend to change the rules of the university, to shift from providing more experiences in and around the classroom to changing the way in which degree programmes are designed in the first place, and changing the basis on which a student is evaluated. There has been a period in AshokaU’s development where minor or elective modules, or even whole courses in a relevant subject were the fashion, then a shift to cross-campus co-curriculum offerings. Having an opt in module on social entrepreneurship is very common now, and so attention shifted to making sure that the influence of the Changemaker team was across all faculties, often bolstered by design workshops, incubators and inspiring innovation spaces. Student-led programming is also a favourite strategy. But, when it comes down to it, changing the way the university makes decisions is the only way to make sure that the critical mass of Changemaker type activities is grafted into the very skeleton of the university. Whereas all the initiatives and projects might be the visible flesh of a Changemaker campus, the viscera are the institutional strategies and written plans, but the skeleton is the committees, the processes of designing and validating the degree programmes, they are the day-to-day activity of the university- the core business. Building 'Changemakerness' into the very essence of the University is the next biggest challenge.
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I’ve just picked up my travel pack for the AshokaU. Wow, it’s a tome. Over 85 different sessions over 3 days. Some serious cloning is required to tackle even a small proportion of the lectures, events, masterclasses and visits that have been prepared for over 800 delegates from around the world. The agenda is so diverse that I ran a word cloud generator to make sense of the breadth and diversity of the programme. Naturally, Social Innovation and Best Practice are the most common words- this is, after all, the world’s largest gathering of academics and students involved in social innovation education. Education and community are the next most frequent. These illustrate a concern with the education community itself- asking questions about what we are doing as educationalists to address the skills gap of the 21st century. But it also reflects a concern with education in the community- how streets, districts, neighbourhoods and urban areas reflect their educational backgrounds. It is interesting to note that incubators and investing is beginning to recede in importance, as the social innovation offerings across campuses move out of the business school terminology. Emerging terms this year seem to be ‘aligned’ (as in learning outcomes), ‘bricolage’, ‘commons’ and even ceremony and meditation heralding a shift of the discourse into wellbeing, and more community-based initiatives. The newest word, which is totally a reflection on the venue, is ‘jazz’. I have spoken before about there needing to be more punk in social entrepreneurship, but perhaps jazz will be more to the taste of the delegates.
My first session will be the designation ceremony, welcoming Florida First, Miami Dade, Northeastern, Singapore Management and UPAEP universities into membership of AshokaU. Then Michael Fitts, President of Tulane University of New Orleans will talk about story-telling. This is a sociological shift, but also a deeper way of expressing ‘social impact’. Much has been debated about measures of social impact, but there also needs to be humans behind these statistics, data points and correlations. Social innovation is essentially about affecting humans, not impact- a term which strikes me as being more akin to a meteorite impact than effecting social change. Then I will be meeting with all the other Change Leaders from the different universities, exchanging news and ideas. We will also hear from Erin and Kim, founders of AshokaU, about the details of their forthcoming book on inspiring university and school campuses to transform lives. The first day ends in the French Quarter of New Orleans with some jazz. Day two seems to start with two best practice sessions- how the relatively neutral term of ‘social innovation’ is advancing social justice in higher education. My own experience in universities has shown that talking bluntly about social justice can be rejected as liberal socialism, merely ‘left wing thinking’ whereas ‘social innovation’ sounds more macho, more ‘solid’. Is this going to be a session about making campuses more socially and environmentally just without ‘scaring the horses’? The second session is about incorporating Changemaker skills into the curriculum, something I have been working on for a while. The challenge here is student oriented- I have had feedback from students asking why they are being ‘forced’ to do volunteering or the Changemaker module. The limited experience of many students suggests that a little mandatory voluntary action widens their experience and deepens their thinking at a level well beyond those without similar experience. The challenge still remains- how do you inspire students to do things they wouldn’t otherwise choose? The two other sessions I will be attending are about ‘design thinking’ and ‘solutions journalism’. Not enough is done to think about social and environmental problems as existing within systems that make the problems worse. Too often, in public policy, politics and in the innovations world, complex social problems are reduced to a few key factors and simplistic solutions invented. I’m hoping that we see more about systems thinking and design thinking across all university curricula. Solutions journalism is accessing news that is about solutions that work, rather than just raising awareness of problems. I’ve probably missed better sessions, and I hope my fellow attendees have made different choices- we will be sharing notes in the hotel to get as good coverage of all the events as possible. I haven’t even had a chance to look at the site visits yet. I may be too busy leading one of the many contemplation and prayer sessions in the wellbeing lounge. |
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October 2023
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