Civic Innovation

Students understand the distinguishing characteristics of innovation and innovative practice, and work with peers building effective collaborations that address a community need. Students identify and analyze the root causes of the need they are addressing, propose creative outcomes, and outline the innovative practices to achieve those outcomes. Civic Project: Entry level project work.

Students develop skills for implementing major projects, focusing on innovation and prototyping social entrepreneurial ideas. Students will acquire skills for identifying results and articulating their work in terms of results achieved in projects and other settings.

Students acquire skills for organizing and implementing collaborative research to find innovative responses to community needs. Students learn how to deploy interviewing, transcription, and reporting skills, and social media skills for effective collaborative innovation and project implementation.

Drawing from efforts for social and cultural change across regional, national, and international contexts, students apply key lessons and strategies to specific contemporary issues and questions, emphasizing the development of innovative ideas and building support for them. Students understand the difference between policy driven innovation and change and citizen driven innovation and change, particularly in the Appalachian context, and assess the effectiveness of those change efforts based on outcomes.

As part of an ongoing major project, student teams effectively organize and mobilize citizens to take on collaborative work that innovatively addresses community needs to achieve tangible results. Teams develop result leaders, recruit participants, negotiate instances of conflict, and identify and learn from mistakes. Civic Project: Organizing Collaborative Work.

Addressing an identified civic issue or question, students apply a range of both quantitative and qualitative research methods to identify innovative ways to achieve tangible outcomes for a community.

In the contexts of the five boroughs of New York, students examine and articulate the relationship between urban society and the built environment, with particular focus on the effects of that relationship on civic innovation for social justice. Students apply their understanding to contemporary urban contexts, including New York, and to local rural communities. Has a travel component.

Students are entrepreneurial leaders in a major ongoing project. As project leaders, students utilize concepts of innovation, social entrepreneurship, results planning, and the identification of citizen leaders.

From examining contemporary situations, students understand the distinctions between asset based and need based community development, as well as the role of spark plugs in communities and how to build the innovative capacity of communities and leaders. Students use quantitative data to analyze community issues, applying these in a major ongoing community development project.

While engaged in a significant leadership on a major collaborative project, drawing on the work already accomplished in the CVIN program, students deploy entrepreneurial leadership skills, developing innovative solutions to identified problems and opportunities, to achieve tangible outcomes on the project. This serves as one part of the two part capstone experience. 

Students produce a major interdisciplinary paper in which they explore an issue or question they have confronted over their time in the program. Students apply concepts of innovation, citizenship, and place, articulating a statement of purpose or identity of themselves as innovative civic leaders. Both the paper and the results portfolio are a part of the student's capstone presentation. Public presentation of Four Year Results Portfolio.

Independent and interdisciplinary research in a special topic for honors.

Independent and interdisciplinary research in a special topic for honors.