Inquiry to Innovation: UC GameChangers Seminar
During the fall semester of 2015, I was fortunate to take the honors seminar Inquiry to Innovation taught by Cory Christopher and now-Board of Trustees Chairman Rob Richardson. The course provided a unique experience to truly learn about brainstorming, and I was able to take away many simple, practical and effective brainstorming strategies and activities that I continue to use today.
The theme of the course this time around was "UC GameChangers." As such, we were tasked to research and develop an implementation plan to a problem or area of opportunity we saw on UC's campus. In the class, which had 14 students, we had four project groups, of which mine was the largest with five members. My team decided to focus on what we had observed as a lack of meaningful, diverse interactions between members of the UC community, with special attention paid to undergraduate students. We found that while our campus has recently dealt with many issues of diversity being brought to the forefront, there still wasn't much interaction among diverse groups of people of any sort that amounted to much learning, despite there being many research-based, positive outcomes to engaging in diverse interactions. As such, we developed a project proposal to create both a campus event and a media campaign to support increased social interactions between diverse groups of people on campus. In the course, I was challenged to question my typical thought processes, go into thought spaces that made me uncomfortable, and dive deeply into research on a topic that sends many folks running from fear of discomfort. Further, we were charged to synthesize that research and our plan into an executive summary document to be presented in a clear and concise manner. It was certainly one of my favorite courses that I have had the privilege to take during my collegiate career. |
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Our Executive Summary
On our final day of the course, we presented our findings orally and in conjunction with a maximum four-page executive summary. This is the end product of that process, which challenged my team to synthesize a semester's worth of work into only four pages.