See the The Common Theme Project (by Kathleen Hanna) presentation for details

1. Change Your World:
The Power of New Ideas
2011 - 2013
Common Theme Steering Committee Co-chairs:
GayleWilliams, Assistant Dean
IUPUI University College
gawillia@iupui.edu
Jane Luzar, Dean
IUPUI Honors College
ejluzar@iupui.edu
Academic Affairs Faculty Fellow for the Common Theme:
Kathleen A. Hanna, Associate Librarian
IUPUI University Library
kgreatba@iupui.edu
Website will launch at the end of April 2011:
http://www.iupui.edu/common_theme/2011/
IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SERVING ON THE STEERING COMMITTEE OR ANY OF
ITS PLANNING SUBCOMMITTEES, PLEASE NOTIFY GAYLE WILLIAMS AT
GAWILLIA@IUPUI.EDU.

2. WHAT’S THE IUPUI COMMON THEME PROJECT?
HTTP://WWW.IUPUI.EDU/COMMON_THEME/2011/
The IUPUI Common Theme Project grew out of an initiative by
University College and is designed to promote campus unity,
conversation, and collaboration across all disciplines on timely issues
that connect IUPUI to central Indiana and the world.
The first Common Theme, ―Consuming Well for the Wealth of
Communities, from IUPUI to the World,‖ spanned academic years
2009–2011 and focused on the green economy, healthy communities, and sustainability. Each year
the Common Theme Steering Committee also chooses one book that supports the Theme and
invites the campus and community to read and discuss it.
The new Common Theme for 2011 - 2013 is “Change Your World: The Power of New Ideas”
and will focus on social entrepreneurship, in principle and practice, using David Bornstein’s
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas as the campus
reader.
We invite faculty to:
 Read the Common Theme book (or pertinent excerpts) and any supplemental sources as
appropriate and use them to enhance your research, teaching, and student engagement.
 Showcase your past and current social entrepreneurship projects or activities with the
campus and community.
 Foster new social entrepreneurship activities, in and out of the classroom and across
disciplines that will attract new partnerships, students, and donors.
 Develop special events that will engage the campus and community.
The Common Theme offers opportunities and benefits for:
 active learning
 service learning
 study/service abroad
 research
 publication, including Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
 case studies
 classroom discussions
 collaboration across the campus and community
How the Steering Committee plans to help:
 Inventory and celebrate social entrepreneurship activities on campus.
 Collect research and stories about activities into an open access journal, hosted by University
Library.
 Offer a clearinghouse of resources to direct people for information, guidance, and assistance
- including UROP, MURI, Solution Center, CSL, and Signature Centers - to connect and
pursue their ideas.
 Develop ―creation stations‖ - virtual and physical spaces for students, faculty, and staff to
explore and develop their ideas and build a sense of community across campus silos.
Change Your World:
The Power of New Ideas
2011 - 2013

3. Change Your World:
The Power of New Ideas
2011 - 2013
2011 - 2013 IUPUI COMMON THEME: OVERVIEW
Kathleen A. Hanna, Associate Librarian
This is . . . about people who solve social problems on a large scale. Most . . . are not
famous. They are not politicians or industrialists. Some are doctors, lawyers and
engineers. Others are management consultants, social workers, teachers, and journalists.
Others began as parents. What unites them is their role as social innovators, or social
entrepreneurs. They have powerful ideas to improve people’s lives and they have
implemented them across cities, countries, and, in some cases, the world.*
The 2011 - 2013 Common Theme is inspired by the stories and principles
described in the book How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas by David
Bornstein. It is about ordinary people from extremely diverse backgrounds and from nearly every
continent who have applied social entrepreneurship principles in the areas of education, medicine
and health care, human rights, environmental issues, access to technology, literacy, sustainable
development, poverty and homelessness, small and micro-business development, women’s and
children’s rights, and infrastructure development.
Social entrepreneurship is a relatively new international movement, and now academic discipline,
that is gaining momentum in a global economy in which governments are unable to sustain efforts
to develop solutions to a burgeoning range of social problems. Bornstein defines social
entrepreneurship as ―. . . a process by which citizens build or transform institutions to advance
solutions to social problems, such as poverty, illness, illiteracy, environmental destruction, human
rights abuses and corruption, in order to make life better for many.‖ It goes beyond a business or a
social activism philosophy; it encompasses a multidisciplinary, holistic worldview. Social
entrepreneurs ―readily cross disciplinary boundaries, pulling together people from different spheres,
with different kinds of experience and expertise, who can, together, build workable solutions that are
qualitatively new.‖
Change Your World: The Power of New Ideas will be part celebration and part challenge. The
IUPUI campus and its individual units are renowned for service learning and social outreach
activities. This Common Theme will allow us to recognize and celebrate our successes as well as
challenge us to find new ways to make an impact in our community. It will introduce the campus
and community to local social entrepreneurs who are willing to share their stories and engage
students, faculty, and staff in events and activities that will encourage thought, debate, research, and
innovation.
This multidisciplinary and multicultural Theme presents many opportunities for cross-campus
research, interaction with international students and faculty, and expanding study abroad programs.
It generates myriad ways to incorporate service and experiential learning at the campus, community,
or global level by building on current partnerships and establishing new ones that will evolve beyond
IUPUI.
Our greatest strengths are our highly diverse and creative population, broad range of disciplines and
partnerships, and access to resources, which make IUPUI uniquely situated to engage in a Common
Theme that has the potential to affect social change both great and small, locally and globally, giving
everyone the potential to truly be a changemaker.
*Bornstein, David. How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. New York: Oxford UP, 2007.
Bornstein, David and Susan Davis. Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.

4. Change Your World:
The Power of New Ideas
2011 - 2013
WHAT’S SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP?
 Social entrepreneurship is a process by which citizens build or
transform institutions to advance solutions to social problems,
such as poverty, illness, illiteracy, environmental destruction,
human rights abuses and corruption, in order to make life better
for many.
Bornstein, David and Susan Davis. Social Entrepreneurship:
What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.
 Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing
social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering
new ideas for wide-scale change.
Rather than leaving societal needs to the government or business sectors, social
entrepreneurs find what is not working and solve the problem by changing the system,
spreading the solution, and persuading entire societies to take new leaps.
Social entrepreneurs often seem to be possessed by their ideas, committing their lives to
changing the direction of their field. They are both visionaries and ultimate realists,
concerned with the practical implementation of their vision above all else.
Each social entrepreneur presents ideas that are user-friendly, understandable, ethical, and
engage widespread support in order to maximize the number of local people that will stand
up, seize their idea, and implement with it. In other words, every leading social entrepreneur
is a mass recruiter of local changemakers—a role model proving that citizens who channel
their passion into action can do almost anything.
Over the past two decades, the citizen sector [people who care and take action to serve
others and cause needed change] has discovered what the business sector learned long ago:
There is nothing as powerful as a new idea in the hands of a first-class entrepreneur.
―What is a Social Entrepreneur?‖ Ashoka.org. 2010. 15 December 2010
<http://ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur>.
 We define social entrepreneurship as having the following three components: (1)
identifying a stable but inherently unjust equilibrium that causes the exclusion,
marginalization, or suffering of a segment of humanity that lacks the financial means or
political clout to achieve any transformative benefit on its own; (2) identifying an
opportunity in this unjust equilibrium, developing a social value proposition, and bringing to
bear inspiration, creativity, direct action, courage, and fortitude, thereby challenging the
stable state’s hegemony; and (3) forging a new, stable equilibrium that releases trapped
potential or alleviates the suffering of the targeted group, and through imitation and the
creation of a stable ecosystem around the new equilibrium ensuring a better future for the
targeted group and even society at large.
Martin, Roger L. and Sally Osberg. ―Social Entrepreneurship: The Case for
Definition.‖ Stanford Social Innovation Review Spring 2007: 29 - 39.

5. ARE WE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS? YES!

6. Change Your World:
The Power of New Ideas
2011 - 2013
EXAMPLES OF WHAT OTHER NURSING STUDENTS AND PROFESSIONALS
ARE DOING AS SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS [FROM ASHOKA.ORG]