Rigor and Innovation and can they Just Get Along?

Dear John Brock,

In our Strategic Plan regarding Academics, there is
a phrase that urges both Rigor and Innovation.

As Gay Hawkins knows, these two values complement,
but vis-a-vis are hostile and opposed and don't Just
get along.   And it's the case that Rigor dominates in
institutional affairs--thus the agonizing emphasis  on
assessment and evaluation and calculating rubrics, rather
than on the prerequisite mess & guess it takes to invent,
 innovate, compose... anything.

Your Presidential Committee on Sustainable, Resilient
Environmentalism might consider turning up emphasis
on, and  consideration of, the Innovation aspect of our
Rigor& Innovation claim.  That would be my proposal
for you.

As media and ways & means in this venture:  ongoing
chatter-across-the-curriculum might be seen as a new
emerging venue  for  faculty development--not the
individual resume kind,  but the  collaborative be-here-now
genius kind:  FACULTY development.

Sampling some of Keith Sawyer’s Group Genius: The
Creative Power of Collaboration , describing the internal
environment which sustains group inquiry and innovation.

 

“Clarity is not a virtue.

If everything you say is detailed and explicit,
you won’t give your collaborators room to run.

Put ideas out there that are half-baked, ideas
where you’re not even sure what it means yet.

Put yourself in an environment that rewards failure.

Creativity is risky; successful creative people are also
the ones who fail the most often.

Creativity is inefficient.

Don’t expect every idea and every project to pan out.
Know when to cut your losses and move on.

“Innovation emerges from the bottom up, unpredictably,
and it’s only after the innovation has occurred that
every one realizes what’s happened.

Innovation can’t be planned; it can’t be predicted:
it has to be allowed to emerge. Like successful
improvisation.

Key to understanding innovation: to realize that
collaborative webs are more important than creative
people. The power of this collaborative web …is
what companies must tap into if they want to create
a culture that encourages significant innovation.

 
Chatter Across the Curriculum suggests a media
half-way between the formal professional published
article-&-presentation  one might fly to Chicago to

deliver: power point and  pages on  the one hand, 
and on the other: hallway, stair well, and loose
lunchroom conversation

Not to diminish the power and effectiveness of
Task Force and Forum Presentation and Discussion.

But supplementary & low-carbon-footprint sustainable:
Chatter Across the Curriculum suggests the possibility
of putting Ideas and Attitudes in play.  Edification.
Building a shared ludic environmentality.  

Chronicle of Higher Education worthy at some point?
complementing the 2 economies:  values of amateur
and values of professional &  how they might could
just get along.

The Faculty that Brays Together Stays Together.

Best, Sam