• ME: Choose 1 practice to support thriving & innovation for you.
• WE: Support thriving & innovation for the team.
• WORK: Share this initiative with your team and engage in one of three workstreams:
  • Innovation Metrics
  • Innovation Framework
  • Culture Discovery

There were three main objectives for this Executive Working Retreat:

1. Strategic Alignment. Leaders will align around the vision and the realities shaping the future of the College.
2. Leadership & Cultural Commitment. Leaders will recognize thriving as a strategic enabler of innovation and institutional excellence and their role in stewarding the conditions necessary to achieve it.
3. Readiness for the Journey Ahead. Leaders will commit to engaging in a shared journey of leadership and culture development designed to strengthen the College’s capacity to thrive and innovate.

Why the College matters

We each told a personal story about a moment that reminded us why the College matters. Four themes emerged: we transform lives by unlocking human potential, we create opportunities that change futures, our impact extends well beyond the individual, and we are a community where people are genuinely known and supported.

The forces shaping our future

We built a physical web of the internal and external factors shaping our future—demographic shifts, AI and technology, financial pressures, employee wellbeing, trust in higher education, the political environment, and others—framed through BANI: brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible.

Our vision of innovation

Working in small groups, we described what students, employees, alumni, partners, and the community would notice if we truly became a model of innovation, then named where that is already happening. Across all three pillars, much of this is already underway in pockets that are not widely known across campus.

Pillar 1: Student experience and success
– Workforce readiness and life design
– A proactive, concierge-like approach to wellbeing and services
– Minimal friction navigating our systems (“the Amazon experience”)
– Flexible access to high-impact practices
– “The city as a lab”

Pillar 2: Academic distinction
– A culture of pride and visible recognition
– Thoughtful AI integration through the QEP
– Stronger industry and institutional partnerships
– Increased national name recognition
– Other institutions coming to learn from us
– A role as regional convener rather than R1 competitor

Pillar 3: Employee experience and success
– Gains in Great Colleges to Work For
– Retention and growth into larger roles
– Pride in the institution
– Stronger applicant pools
– A more accountable culture
– Greater presence and engagement on campus
– Employee wellbeing supports, housing, and facilities

Our stories of leading

We shared the leadership we had expressed throughout our lives before ever calling it leadership: helping run the preschool our mother operated out of our house, stepping in to lead the prayer at a campus vigil after 9/11, organizing summer open gyms when coaches could not, choosing drills when a coach would not run practice.

Four themes emerged:
– Leadership begins before we choose it
– We stepped up when it was needed
– We led through action rather than title
– We led before it felt earned

Our innovation capabilities

Imagining ourselves five years out as one of the most innovative universities in the country, we asked what people would notice about how we lead, and clustered our answers into fourteen capabilities. We narrowed these to a top ten and rated each on importance and current demonstration using a 1–5 scale. We then defined five of the ten capabilities. See the Your Shared Thinking document linked above for details.