Innovation Fund Yields Valuable Results

The Innovation Fund is providing students, faculty, and staff with new ways to teach, learn, and thrive at the College.

The fund provides grants to promising pilot projects — initiated by faculty, students, and staff — that enrich campus life and learning.

Grant recipients have created pioneering projects to analyze data, capitalize on the expertise of alumni, use technology to create global partnerships, and improve wellness.

Michael Latham, dean of the College and vice-president for academic affairs, says the grant program, in its second year, has resulted in “remarkably innovative” projects.

“It fits squarely with a number of President [Raynard S.] Kington’s goals,” he says. “It fits squarely with the College’s strategic planning process, and I think it’s comparatively unusual.”

Latham points to successes like the Data Analysis and Social Inquiry Lab (DASIL), which received a grant in 2012–13. It has increased the ability of professors and students to use data in new ways.

“Giving students greater access to working with data, working with technology across the disciplines, is something that really has tremendous benefits for them,” Latham says.

Another project uses teleconferencing to bring together students from Grinnell and a Russian university with the goal of developing cultural and linguistic competency.

“That kind of telecom-munications technology is really an advantage to any fields within global studies,” Latham says.

He also lauds a student-initiated Wellness Lounge.

“It’s quite telling that students are concerned about holistic experiences,” he says. “It shows a degree of sophisticated thinking that they’re concerned about work-life balance.”

Mark Peltz, the Daniel ’77 and Patricia Jipp Finkelman ’80 Dean in the Center for Careers, Life, and Service, says a project to integrate alumni expertise into coursework helps strengthen the value and relevancy of a liberal arts education.

“It presents an opportunity for faculty to invite practitioners into their classrooms to share perspectives and insights about how the subject matter is understood and applied in the world beyond Grinnell,” he says.

Clinton D. Korver ’89, chair of the College’s Board of Trustees, serves on the grant review team, Latham says.

“It shows the College places the fund at a high priority,” Latham says. “I think to some extent what the Innovation Fund allows us to do is to pilot a new approach to teaching — a new strategy to promote student learning and see how it works.”

A revolving fund of $500,000 is available for pilot projects and up to $50,000 for planning projects.

Latham says he expects the most successful projects likely will be sustained after the pilot period ends.