The document describes an agenda for an idea lab on envisioning the future of community engagement at colleges and universities. Part 1 discusses ingredients of an ideal engaged campus, including policies, structures, curriculum, funding, and partnerships. Participants discuss which ingredients already exist, are being developed, or need to be invented. Part 2 asks participants to imagine what the engaged campus might look like in 2040, including its mission statement, curriculum organization, and community partnerships. Several provocations and exercises are presented to spark ideas about reimagining higher education.

1. Idea Lab:
Envisioning the Future
of Campus Community
Engagement

2. Agenda
• Part 1 - Ingredients of Ideal
Community Engaged College or
University
• Part 2 - College or Universities in 2040

3. Part 1
The Ideal Community
Engaged Campus

4. Ingredients of the Ideal
Community Engaged Campus
1) Policies
2) Structures
3) Curriculum
4) Funding
5) Partnerships
6) Other…
Individually…
Describe ingredients
(one idea per note)
As a group…
Report out, comment,
and group

5. Ingredients of the Ideal
Community Engaged Campus
1) Policies
2) Structures
3) Curriculum
4) Funding
5) Partnerships
6) Other…
Discuss which…
• already exist
• are being developed
• have yet to be
invented
Consider…
• what we can do
collectively to move in
this direction

6. Part 2
The Community
Engaged Campus
in 2040

7. Assuming our best laid plans
turned out to be true…
Then what….?
Imagine the campus 25 years in the
future…
• What will be its mission statement?
• How will the curriculum be organized?
• How will campus community
partnerships be defined?

8. Open Loop University
Provocation
Why do we confine higher education to the
early years of our adult life?
The advent of online learning hints at a vast
demand for knowledge and skills throughout
one’s life.
An ‘Open Loop University’ could be a holistic
approach to nurturing and supporting lifelong
learning.

9. First Day at College
Imagine that it is your first day in college. During
orientation you learn that you have been placed in
a new pilot program.
Instead of spending four successive years at
college, you get 6 years to distribute throughout
your life. Periods spent at the university are called
“in-loops,” and periods spent in the world beyond
the campus are called “out-loops.”
Sketch your first few “in-loops” and “out-loops.”
How would one affect the other?

10. First Day at College

11. First Day at College
Reflection Questions
1) If you have already graduated from
college, would you consider taking an “in-
loop”? If you are still in college, would you
take an “out-loop”? Why? Why not?
2) How did social factors (like staying with
your cohort) factor into your decisions?
3) How would you know when to transition
from an “in-loop” to an “out-loop” and
vice-versa?

12. Purpose Learning
Provocation
Could personal meaning and global impact
become a part of the university lexicon?
Purpose Learning reinvents the ‘why’ of higher
education, both internally— finding personal
meaning in learning, and externally—how it
impacts the world.

13. You are the Dean of a School at your university or
college (the one that housed your undergraduate
major). You just got a memo from the Provost stating
that your university is going to set up 5 ‘Impact Labs’
around the world. These are facilities where students
and faculty tackle global challenges on location.
You have been asked to propose two locations and
explain why students from your School will benefit
from it.
Memo from the Provost

14. Memo from the Provost
Reflection Questions
1) What kind of personal (and not just
academic) learnings can students have
from such an experience?
2) What would faculty members gain from
such an immersion?

15. Prompts
Step #1 — If you are working on a project, answer the following
about your project on a piece of paper.
- What are you trying to accomplish?
- Who is it for?
- Why is it important?
Step #2 — Choose a card from the deck and combine the prompt on
the card with your project context to generate new ideas.

16. Purpose Learning
Declare a mission, not a major

17. Other Exercises

18. Make a Timeline
Think of five moments when someone who might use
your concept will interact with it.
Plot it on a timeline. What might they do before and
after?

19. Make a Comic Strip
Imagine the 3 panel comic strip on the left is a scene in
the world of your idea. What are the characters saying?

20. Make a Comic Strip
Imagine the 3 panel comic strip on the left is a scene in
the world of your idea. What are the characters saying?

21. Act It Out
Act out a scene in the world in which your idea or concept
already exists.

22. Write a News Headline
What would the headline be if your idea or concept was
covered in the news?
Write the headline and the first two sentences of the
story.
Remember the press doesn’t just describe the idea, the
press covers news. Why is your idea newsworthy?

23. Make a Sketch
Find a blank sheet of paper and sketch your concept or
idea. Start by doodling. Then sketch your concept. Sketch
how people use it.

24. Prompts
Step #1 — If you are working on a project, answer the following
about your project on a piece of paper.
- What are you trying to accomplish?
- Who is it for?
- Why is it important?
Step #2 — Choose a card from the deck and combine the prompt on
the card with your project context to generate new ideas.

25. Paced Education
Go slow to grow fast.

26. Open University
College isn’t just a time, it’s a lifetime.

27. Axis Flip
It’s not what you know, it’s how you use it.

28. Purpose Learning
Declare a mission, not a major

29. Wildcard
What’s an opportunity for change in
higher education that inspires you?

30. A Rift in Spacetime
Something strange happened this morning as you
sauntered onto your college’s campus. There was a flash
of blinding light and then it looked nothing like the one
you know. As you went about exploring, you bumped into
Professor Zemeckis Fox, a physicist who explained that
you are in a future version of your college, in the year
2040. Their time travel technology sometimes causes rifts
in the space-time continuum and hence you have been
teleported here.
Make a sketch of what you see in this future vision of
your college or university.

31. A Rift in Spacetime
Reflection Questions
1) What is the one defining characteristic of
your vision of your university college’s
future?
3) How are students in this future similar to or
different from the students of today?

32. Paced Education
Provocation
What if students moved through college based
on their individual pace instead of age?
Students would make better choices about what
to study, and graduate with mastery of not just
what they learn but also how they learn.

33. No More Freshmen
You are the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at your
university. It has been decided that the Freshman and
Sophomore years will be abolished. Instead, a new Calibration
phase has been launched, a flexible 6-18 month period right
before a student would declare their field of study. The phase
will help students in academic exploration and personal
reflection, so that they move ahead based on individual
readiness instead of age.
To support students in their Calibrate journey, you have
requested a research lab to develop a device called ‘The Grit Bit’.
Write down three things that such a device could help students
know about themselves. In what learning contexts will students
use that information? (At this point, you don’t need to consider
how this device would work or what is technologically feasible.)

34. No More Freshmen
Reflection Questions
1) What are some ways to help students
address the same needs without using
technology?
2) How would this knowledge help students
navigate their educational experience?

35. Axis Flip
Provocation
Students graduating today will invent new career
paths that do not yet exist.
Today, the major is the axis around which most
learning experiences are designed. But what about
transferability across fields?
To navigate our changing world, could we equip
students with an education built on competencies that
could be adapted and translated to many different
contexts?

36. The Map from the Archives
You recently discovered an unusual map from your
university’s archives. Instead of the departments or schools
that most universities have, it had undergraduate hubs as
shown below. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any description of
what these hubs were about.
1) Recall 5 classes that you took for your major. Mark the
hubs most likely to have offered them.
2) Come up with 5 new class titles that would still count
towards your major requirements, but would be covered
in these hubs. Annotate these on the map.
(For example, if your major is Computer Science, what class
in the Hub of Engaging Difference would count towards
your major?)

37. The Map from the Archives

38. The Map from the Archives
Reflection Questions
1) Would you take the new classes you have
created? Why? Why not?
2) In what current ways do students have
experiences similar to what might have
been offered in these hubs?