Students, faculty and members of the community at large can contribute ideas to the college through the Center for Innovation, which had its first meeting in December.
The first issue under consideration was staff development. The next issue will be the price and future of textbooks.
The Center aims at providing a think-tank environment for ideas that may benefit the college. Viable ideas are brought to the attention of a mini cabinet made up of college officials.
Dr. Terry Calaway, college president, said the Center was created to encourage creative thinking at the college.
“Colleges become stagnant,” Calaway said. “[The Center will] create a more vibrant think-tank.”
Calaway said there were no hard targets set for the Center.
“I don’t want to be prescriptive,” Calaway said. “We have some targets, but they are not binding, there is some fluidity.”
Jason Kovac, executive director of the Center for Innovation, said the process is an important part of the cycle.
“We emphasize a culture of innovation,” Kovac said. “One session does not work, so we get people together and orient them through thinking creatively.”
The participants involved in the cycle change for every issue. Kovac said the Center tried to include students as much as possible.
“We try to have two to eight staff and one or two students involved,” Kovac said.
Erick Mbembati, Student Senate vice-president, is one of the students involved for the next cycle about textbooks.
“There are three stages: giving us the info, getting ideas, and discussing the ideas,” Mbembati said. “Right now we are looking at what other schools have done to address [the textbook issue.]”
Anyone can contribute ideas. Kovac said there were two avenues to reach out to members of the community who may have ideas that could benefit the college.
“We are aiming to have a world café once per semester to connect with members of the community,” Kovac said. “We also have an ideascale website where users can submit ideas and upvote and downvote them.”
The world café is scheduled for some time after spring break. The ideascale website is already up and may be accessed at http://jccc.ideascale.com.
The Center is funded through general funds, but Calaway said he hopes in the future the Center could become self-sustaining by offering its services to businesses for a fee.
Contact Rachel Luchmun, news editor, at rluchmun@jccc.edu.