The 16 Transformative Initiatives Grounded in the Primary Objectives Identified in the Columbia College Chicago 2026-2029 Strategic Plan
1 Develop a Collaboratory of corporate partnerships that sponsor student projects they intend to implement in their organizations using a $35K annual subscription service (e.g. Fashion Lab, Beauty Lab) or $100K three-year partnership service. Ensure that these funds go directly into School budgets so that Directors have discretionary funds beyond their operations budget to elevate program-specific ideas and initiatives aligned with action items and desired outcomes within the strategic plan.
YEAR 1: Recruit 4 new partners and disseminate $20K annually across 7 Schools (excludes SoF, which already does its own fundraising of this kind)
YEAR 2: Recruit 4 new partners and disseminate $40K annually across 7 Schools
YEAR 3: Recruit 4 new partners and disseminate $60K annually across 7 Schools
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will improve student experience, augment and differentiate our academic portfolio, drive brand engagement, strengthen philanthropy, expand partnership and career opportunities, and strengthen financial sustainability.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: This initiative generates revenue rather than expending it. As demonstrated by the Fashion Lab since 2018, partnership operations of this kind require a course in a faculty member’s regular load for a credit-awarding practicum as well as a small budget for research expenses (under $1000 each semester), paid for by the corporate contribution.
2 Reimagining Creative Education Through Foundation Partnerships. Forge new relationships with Chicago institutions like the Driehaus Design Initiative and the Virgil Abloh Foundation to combine their higher education objectives with our own in ways that customize and brand a radically new form of learning that will have the added advantage of cultivating and appealing to young Black men, a demographic that is historically underrepresented in higher education, and young White men, a demographic more recently dwindling in higher education and who represent a group highly vulnerable to pernicious online messaging that seeks to radicalize them. The model can center around studio-oriented, apprenticeship-style, pop-culture and hip-hop networked communities for conversation, invention, mentorship, and style in the manner practiced by the late Virgil Abloh, whose transformative vision for education, entrepreneurship, and cultural ownership/authorship dovetails neatly with Columbia’s mission and values. These ideas and practices further synchronize with those of the late Richard Driehaus, whose Foundation has a decade-long history of engagement with our institution and support of our students, and whose goal was to give young people access to design education that would speed their business success and financial mobility.
In parallel, the college could go further to pursue partnerships with organizations across the creative industries that expand mentorship, collaboration, and professional engagement between students and working artists, cultural leaders, and industry partners. As a Hispanic-Serving Institution, Columbia is uniquely positioned to build networks that connect students with creative communities through joint projects, experiential learning opportunities, and cross-disciplinary mentorship.
This approach could extend into specific partnerships with organizations such as the Latino Film Institute and the Mexican-American Cultural Education Foundation (MACEF), creating opportunities for students and alumni to engage directly with Latino storytelling communities while strengthening Columbia’s role as a national hub for creative practice and industry leadership.
YEAR 1: Call of gathering of Driehaus and Abloh Foundation leadership to pitch the vision. Welcome the Abloh Air cohort (annual groups of high school students whom the Foundation selects to give access to arts and culture opportunities during their senior year) onto campus and provide studio training and access as well as mentorship for them. Formalize collaborative learning environments with organizations whose work aligns with Columbia’s mission as a Hispanic-Serving Institution, expanding pathways into cultural production, mentorship, and creative industry careers for historically underrepresented communities.
YEAR 2: Work with Foundation leadership to develop and market an atelier and begin recruitment of the first cohort
YEAR 3: Identify success metrics of the atelier and begin to assess its success. Get the message out to social impact investors who can support individual cohort members in their education and launch after graduation
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will drive brand engagement, strengthen financial sustainability, leverage facilities and spaces, activate partnerships, and strengthen philanthropy.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: This initiative is designed as a philanthropic measure, not for financial investment by the College. The impact to facilities supervision and training of the initial Abloh Air venture will be minimal and does not require additional budget.
3 Solicit the support of individual and corporate disruption investors currently focused on primary and secondary education interested in sponsoring the kinds of radical transformations in higher education that we are currently endeavoring to launch. Use this to brand ourselves as a school that is not struggling to keep up with the times using traditional/outdated learning modalities and simply copying the EAB playbook every institution is passing around, but rather which is charting the path forward for twenty-first higher education by taking calculated risks and embracing student-centric innovations.
YEAR 1: Gather metrics and a portfolio.
YEAR 2: Solicit investor meetings.
YEAR 3: Assess and track outcomes.
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will drive brand engagement, strengthen financial sustainability, leverage partnerships, and strengthen philanthropy.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: The initiative is designed to generate revenue, not expend it. However, it may be advantageous to have a development officer or Cabinet member with experience in investment capital solicitation in the education market.
4 Pioneer programming in “the Other AI Aesthetic Intelligence” (Brown 2019) as a competitive advantage offered by cultivating sensory experiences, capacity, and sophistication in an automated world. The “other AI” framework can offer a form of unique, creative disciplines-centric form of critical engagement with the development, use, and consumption of LLMs and generative AI in the modern world. Columbia can become a center for discourse on ethical and contextualized AI in the creative disciplines, training students in how to avoid AI pitfalls, use AI intelligently and in human-centric and sustainable ways, conform AI to aesthetic standards and values rather than being formed by it, develop guidelines for companies and other creatives as well as for their professional selves, and even impact the development of AI by suggesting intelligence pathways beyond western, cosmopolitan ideals and driven by soft, embodied, intuitive, truly generative, and curious modalities. As this work develops, the college can explore ways to organize learning around Creative Industries and A.I. as a cross-disciplinary pathway
that connects storytelling, design, media production, and computing. Such an approach would reinforce Columbia’s commitment to human-centered creativity while preparing students to work thoughtfully with emerging technologies and be authors of their time.
YEAR 1: Apply for and get a grant for a Center for the Other AI to pioneer creative discipline-centric impact on AI development and consumption in modernity; simultaneously launch a public-facing lecture series to host scholars and researchers who are critically engaged with AI out of a desire to impact the future of its use and design
YEAR 2: Launch the Center, focusing on continuing the lecture series, developing the design strategy common core module, and seeking external partners
YEAR 3: Grow the Center, focusing on job placement and career development outcomes for graduates who have “the Other AI”
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will drive brand engagement, strengthen financial sustainability, leverage facilities and spaces, engage with partners and the public, strengthen philanthropy, and augment/differentiate the academic portfolio
Financial Implications of the Initiative: The initiative is designed to be grant funded. The initial lecture series can draw from existing funding sources for lecture series in visual arts, fashion, and design.
5 A National Network for Creative Industry Immersion. Expand SiLA into SiNY (Semester in New York) and, eventually SiMi (Semester in Miami), in order to bring our institution into the playing field with top coastal arts, media, and design institutions while offering a three-coast education experience to as many students as possible. Make Columbia College Chicago a Chicago-based and Chicago-grown three-coast arts school that puts students in networks on all America coasts including our Lake Michigan “third coast” and elevate Chicago’s unique arts, media and culture scene in the process. Create a host SiChi summer program for students at other schools who want to spend a summer benefitting from our network and our scene in Chicago, as well as unique degree pathways unavailable at other institutions.
YEAR 1: Mobilize and expand curricular offerings for current students from across Columbia to increase SiLA participation, including non-Columbia students, life-long learning (extension) participants and alumni upskilling programs; begin crafting the SiChi program. Tell the story of tri-coastal arts and culture education to new students and investors.
YEAR 2: Design and launch the first SiNY cohort while continuing to increase SiLA participation and launching SiChi
YEAR 3: Design and launch the first SiMi cohort while continuing to increase SiLA, SiNY, and SiChi participation
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will improve student experience, augment and differentiate our academic portfolio, drive brand engagement, and improve partnerships.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: Working with institutional partnerships can help mitigate some of the expenses of the Si programs beyond LA, but this is an area that would require investments in on the ground program administrators at a minimum. Over time, amped up investment could be desirable based on revenue outcomes.
6 Grow our profile in the academy and arts/culture scene of the city and nation by offering summer institutes to college professors funded by the NEA, NEH, and even the NSF (by partnering with STEM programs in local universities on neuroaesthetics projects); hosting a festival-style fall mini-mester to culture afficionados nationwide (or even internationally) who want to learn from our star faculty, live on campus, enjoy downtown Chicago arts and culture, and experience a taste of college life this can be done in tandem with the Loop Arts Fest that will run, beginning in 2027, from Labor Day to the Holidays in downtown Chicago; offering study abroad/away culture tours to alumni, donors, and anyone who wants to learn while traveling with Columbia professors; offering summer camps on campus to younger kids whose parents are looking for cool arts and culture opportunities for them over the summer.
YEAR 1: Submit grant applications; plan the first mini-mester for 2027 launch with the new Loop Arts Festival; launch culture tours in tandem with New York and L.A. alumni events; design kid camps
YEAR 2: Continue to submit grant applications; launch the mini-mester; plan a study abroad tour for summer 2028; launch the first kids camps
YEAR 3: Continue to submit grant applications; continue successful ventures from year 2; grow the kids camp offerings
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will drive brand engagement, strengthen financial sustainability, leverage facilities and spaces, and improve operational efficiency.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: Some start-up costs for some of the proposed items, but the operations should be revenue-generating and self-sustaining.
7 Design and start the Columbia Career Continuum: A customized 4-year career plan built to kick off a lifetime of creative impact.
Launch a college-wide, expansive integration of career education, professional development, experiential learning opportunities, and industry engagement that is both high-tech and high-touch, embedded in students’ academic and extra-curricular experiences and fully leveraging our location in Chicago, one of the nation’s leading creative hubs The continuum will build upon the well-established academic journey, creating a broader platform where professional experience, creative practice, and community engagement are seamlessly integrated into student life while also establishing a foundation for a lifelong relationship with the college centered on continuous learning, meaningful engagement and giving back to the community and future generations of students.
Year 1 – Infrastructure, Alignment & Targeted Pilots
Formally launch governance structure in steering committee and Industry Advisory Board; assess and determine curricular connections; identify, begin training for, and soft launch coaching and assessment tools, such as CliftonStrengths; develop a career component for the First-Year Experience program for FA27 start; create and instrumentalize major-specific 4-year career plans; and launch internship promotional campaign across campus. Enact structural changes to increase equity and access to ensure all first-year students begin engaging with industry and community contexts from their first semester on campus.
Year 2 – Scaling Embedded Experiences & Industry Engagement
Expand First Year Experience program and launch admissions yield career program; integrate job simulations (Forage), cross-disciplinary collaboration labs, and client-based coursework into curricula; scale Career Treks and conference engagement; increase the Internship Award funding pool; formalize participation pipelines into existing high-impact programs (Columbia Agency, Fashion Lab, AEMMP, Live @2239, Sessions @ 33, etc.) alongside expanded partnerships with community-based organizations to support applied, impact-driven work.
Year 3 – Full Four-Year
Activation & Accountability
Implement the complete upper-division structure college-wide (Advanced Internship expectation, professional development curriculum components, public-facing capstones, networking and conference engagement with NYC, LA, and Chicago-based industry partners). Launch dashboards reporting internship participation, industry engagement, and post-graduate outcomes to leadership and trustees. Institutionalize continuous feedback loops with faculty, students, and industry advisors to refine and sustain the model.
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will expand and leverage partnerships to enhance academic and career opportunities for students, strengthening brand, philanthropy, and engagement; improve student experience and increase retention, helping to stabilize enrollment; and will create pathways for engagement that promote and amplify Columbia’s mission and institutional priorities, while building a lifelong network of engaged alumni connected through mentorship, collaboration, and continued learning opportunities
Financial Implications of the Initiative: Little additional financial investment is required. Existing scholarship funds can be utilized to support an admissions yield program. Fundraising is needed to grow scholarships for unpaid internships. Annual budget is required to provide Clifton Strengths assessments and one-time coach training for two staff. Travel budget would be used to strengthen industry relationships outside of Chicago.
8 Build upon the existing model of Columbia Agency by introducing other models for sponsored studio time and executive education to our revenue-building, portfolio-growing student- and facultypowered service offerings.
YEAR 1: Prepare Columbia Agency for growth and begin insourcing our own marketing and design projects to our own students and broadcast our in-house design model. Design our model and solicit targets for sponsored studio time and uniquely-Columbia forms of executive education
YEAR 2: Launch sponsored studio time and executive education programming in Columbia-identified leadership areas (photography, film, illustration, animation, UX design, embodied practices, theatre improv for professionals, beauty management, retail design)
YEAR 3: Grow executive education programming to include asynchronous online models
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will expand education pathways, strengthen financial sustainability, augment the academic portfolio, drive brand engagement, and improve student experience.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: A new position in the development office focused on executive education as we do not currently possess this expertise in-house.
9 Merge education with content creation by becoming an institutional influencer and offering adisciplinary, non-matriculated experiential digital and in-person experiences aligned with mass cultural trends. These can also serve as marketing tools for our advanced degree and certificate pathways, similarly to influencers on Substack who offer tiered subscriptions for more extensive access to content. This initiative feeds into “the Content Creator Economy,” where artists, storytellers, designers, and media-makers build careers through direct audience engagement making these integrated skills essential for the rapidly emerging next generation of creative professionals.
YEAR 1: Use the existing, about-to-launch Screenwriting and Beauty Management degrees to establish a social media and in person presence for Columbia as changemakers and thought leaders in these two areas; create a new model for marketing and program delivery that leverages TikTok, Substack/Discord subscriptions, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube. Launch a Beauty Summit on campus to assemble
influencers here. Launch a Screenwriting Summit that highlights our status as a #1 film school to gather other thought leaders and changemakers in industry on our campus to learn, exchange ideas, and identify areas of new impact.
YEAR 2: Identify and launch another 1-2 new programs with influencer potential consider Creative Arts Labor Relations, interdisciplinary Craft, Creative Futures (AI and more), and Styling programs for this.
YEAR 3: Launch an Entrepreneurship Incubator as an optional design strategy core pathway capstone experience to set up students who want to open their own business and support new alumni with winning business ideas.
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will improve student experience, expand education pathways, drive brand engagement, strengthen financial sustainability
Financial Implications of the Initiative: New program expenses and cost of the Summits (which should be ticketed, but initially the College will need to advance funds for these). It might be advantageous to have marketing staff member(s) specifically focused on building the social media presence for this initiative. Ultimately, however, these investments should drive new revenue. The Entrepreneurship Incubator may have potential for generating funding, both in getting investment capital to talented alumni and more directly as a way of bringing dividends on successful ventures to the College.
10 Create a brand extension to house radical ideas and allow for smaller-scale pilots and a fastfailure model without compromising the main Columbia College Chicago brand. This could become a pathway toward shifting from a College to a University framework, which would amplify our legitimacy and reputation.
YEAR 1: Name and launch the brand; identify initiatives we will pilot from within it
YEAR 2: Seek investors and partners who want to support our most transformative initiatives
YEAR 3: Use success metrics to determine which initiatives should be migrated to the larger Columbia brand
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will drive brand engagement, stabilize enrollment, stabilize the academic portfolio, strengthen financial sustainability, and improve operational efficiency.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: Brand extensions facilitate risk-taking that can drive revenue without endangering the main brand. It also facilitates organizational agility and can allow for more flexibility in the extension LC.
11 Treat our shows like our athletics! To our students, our exhibitions and performances are our athletics. They are what you do on a Saturday night, how alumni come home, and how we have a good time and build community. Come to the For Women By Women show, which annually brings hundreds of students, friends, and families to a single art show, or the Made@Columbia fashion show, performed to an audience of over 1000 each spring, to see what we mean. We want to know when other programs’ things are! Market all of our shows to everyone and brand them as our athletics: this is what WE go out on Saturday night to see! This is OUR “division one” game!
YEAR 1: We want a calendar of all the events at Columbia, which can also become an external facing community calendar (and potentially, through ticket sales, a source of revenue for the College). Gather the alumni tribes and bring them home. Identify times and places in our outdoor parks and spaces for
tailgating and cookouts. Create a totally Columbia school mascot homemade, or rather Made@Columbia and have them show up at exhibitions, performances, lectures, and the cookouts.
YEAR 2: Create a Columbia Creative Fellows Program in which we invite national artists, including HSI creatives as well as Chicago leaders, to participate in the event series with performances, shows, short intensive workshops. Identify thought leaders among our alumni. They, along with the Creative Fellows, can also participate in events, engage with alumni, and act as part of our community. We can become known as the younger, hipper, more diverse and edgy version of Chicago Humanities.
YEAR 3: Work in years 1-2 to cultivate funds via sponsorship to launch, in year 3, our own E-Sports team.
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will drive brand engagement, strengthen financial sustainability, leverage facilities and spaces, and improve operational efficiency.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: Most of this is a communication initiative that reframes what we already do. We should purchase a ticketing system for the events, mail the events calendar to our neighbors and friends in the city as well as our alumni, and host a couple of the tailgating/cookout events. The Fellows program can augment our teaching offerings and be funded out of part time faculty budgets. We can seek sponsors for lectures in our series. The E-Sports team will require major investment, but is an attractive target for corporate and individual donors.
12 Recommit to jeopardized historic Columbia programs like photography, art, and dance by redefining the value proposition of a degree in these fields while identifying financially sustainable ways to run strategically small cohorts in these programs. They are part of the fabric of our institution and an important contribution to marketing for our entire College. Getting clear about which programs are advantageous to grow, and which need to remain strategically small and elite will enable the institution to support these marketing and reputation ventures and improve rankings and academic status without jeopardizing the financial position of the College as a whole. Messaging our commitment to endangered arts and culture fields by revising their framework in the contemporary world and tailoring education to it will be an exciting story to tell and elevate our brand as a leader in the creative arts.
YEAR 1: Work with School Directors and Financial Affairs to identify the optimal sustainable sizing for these programs; task faculty and leaders in these programs to identify a new value proposition for the degrees and adjust curricula accordingly if needed. Market the message of Columbia’s commitment to the future of photography, art, and dance at an institution where these disciplines have thrived. Ride the momentum of the MoCP’s recent fundraising success as a show of unprecedented show of support for endangered creative disciplines by now calling in alumni, donors, and friends via the MoCP and Dance Presenting Series to participate in dialogs, shape the future, and financially support the new value propositions and ventures
YEAR 2: Recruit selectively to build the new cohorts. Simultaneously, explore program models that expand access to courses in photography, art, and dance for adult learners and community members as well as repackaging their programming for certificates, stackable credentials, or as components of other existing or new degrees as the College
YEAR 3: Focus on developing and preparing to seek strong retention, persistence, and job placement metrics for the 2028 cohorts
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will drive brand engagement, stabilize the academic portfolio, strengthen financial sustainability, leverage facilities and spaces, activate partnerships, and strengthen philanthropy.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: The initiative should galvanize philanthropic support of the programs, and the goal is to develop forms of programming that are financially sustainable and marketable at a moment of cultural transition.
13 Columbia College Chicago can strategically leverage its real estate assets to create a long-term, diversified revenue stream that strengthens the College’s fiscal sustainability while contributing to solutions for some of Chicago’s most pressing urban challenges, including affordable housing, neighborhood segregation, and downtown retail vacancy. By activating underutilized or strategically located properties through partnerships with mission-aligned investors and civic organizations, the College can transform portions of its real estate portfolio into income-generating assets. This approach reduces reliance on tuition revenue, improves financial resilience, and positions CCC as a creative and civic leader in shaping equitable urban development in Chicago’s South Loop.
YEAR 1: Conduct feasibility analysis and identify philanthropic and impact investors; Develop a development plan that aligns financial sustainability with community impact; Engage with the City of Chicago, CCC alum and MacArthur Fellow Tonika Lewis Johnson, whose Folded Map project highlights Chicago’s legacy of segregation, to help guide the project’s civic engagement and storytelling.
YEAR 2: Secure capital, procure services and begin design of building; continue to partner with Folded Maps, City of Chicago and other organizations to show the civic, as well as financial, ambitions of our project
YEAR 3: Break ground on new construction with target of completion and begin leasing residential and/or mixed-use spaces. Begin generation of ongoing rental revenue and potential ground-lease income, creating a sustainable financial contribution to the College’s operating model.
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will advance fiscal sustainability through diversified, nontuition revenue streams, Elevate the Columbia brand as a civic leader in Chicago; Leverage existing facilities and real estate assets more strategically; Activate partnerships with civic organizations, the City of Chicago, and philanthropic investors
Financial Implications of the Initiative: This approach is designed to be structured primarily through impact investment and development partnerships, minimizing the need for significant institutional capital investment. By monetizing portions of the College’s real estate portfolio through leasing and/or development agreements, CCC can generate long-term recurring revenue while advancing its civic mission.
14 There are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Adopt the perspective of complete responsibility for organizational success and failure among administrative leadership by researching and identifying an evaluation system that emphasizes measurable success in executing specific initiatives and adopt it; if none exists, work with experts in organizational management and design thinking to develop one (and publish it the culture is hungry for this approach in higher education) or customize an existing model for non-profit and specifically higher education contexts. Metrics for administrators’ personal advancement and success should be clearly linked to organizational advancement and success; no leader should be treated as succeeding when the organization as a whole is not thriving, evaluated by measures inclusive of employee well-being, work-life balance, confidence in leadership and the futurity and stability of the organization, and a sense of self-efficacy in organizational tasks.
YEAR 1: Research or create an administrative leadership evaluation system
YEAR 2: Launch the system and market the story of our commitment to efficacy at all levels
YEAR 3: Begin the first iteration of the evaluation process
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will drive brand engagement, create an engaged workforce, and improve accountability and efficiency across the organization.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: If the selected system is a trademarked one, the College may need to invest in it. The College may also choose to work with an external consultant to implement the new system, especially if a specific leadership and training mindset is central to its function.
15 Making Culture In Real Time. Use “Arts in the Dark” and “Manifest,” our Fall and Spring Semester Arts Festivals, to catapult Columbia beyond scholastic programming into the very fabric of the city of Chicago. These festivals can be a model for other forms of immersive, experiential education whose goal is to activate student and faculty creative work beyond the classroom into actual, in-themoment, live cultural authorship.
YEAR 1: Expand the Arts in the Dark Parade and After Party participation by merging with Open House and Parents Weekend to electrify the College’s entire student center, while expanding Big Chicago courses into making and production spaces that funnel freshmen and transfer students into the experience. Orienting the first-year experience around our signature festivals will create immediate community and belonging and raise the stakes on educational experience here from day one. Merging recruitment with our fall festival will differentiate our Open House, and thus the College, from all others in the country. We can also advance existing programs like the Made@Columbia fashion show, the “CCC Presents” alumni-led feature film production initiative, Columbia Agency UX design, AEMMP Records, the MoCP, the Dance Presenting Series, and South By Southwest participation, and launch new externalfacing programs like “Verticals Co-Production,” an interdisciplinary collaboration potentially impacting students from across the college.
YEAR 2: Create a collaborative, multi-disciplinary activation in the Chicago Loop Alliance’s Loop Arts Festival event on State Street to compliment the Parade and Party in October 2027. We are also invited to participate in creating the marketing and branding materials of this City initiative in 2026.
YEAR 3: Identify other opportunities for special project-based initiatives that we can launch in Chicago to make our name as an arts and media production brand in the city. Given that we have just invested the first female president of the College in 90 years, the existing For Women By Women art show could be a good place to start and has the potential to take on a national profile.
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will improve student experience, stabilize and augment our academic portfolio, and drive brand engagement.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: The initiative does not require major new investments. Arts in the Dark utilized existing budgets in 2025; the After Party was sponsored by Red Bull. Red Bull has additional capacity. The merging of the programs with Open House will also be an efficient way to leverage existing budgets for broader reach, scope, and impact.
16 Reinventing The Common Core For Creative Practice. Pilot a revolutionary new Columbia common core pathway in critical design strategy that brands all Columbia graduates as possessing a set of unique and recognizable skillsets and style in market research, multi-media presentation and visualization, relational and cross-functional teamwork, storytelling, process-oriented portfolio construction, creative AI usage, data analytics, and embodied/somatic techniques for professional sustainability and wellness. The critical design strategy core builds upon the tremendous industry capital of design thinking and human centered design but goes beyond these and also beyond simple technical/vocational skillsets revolving around software usage to incorporate approaches and practices historically relegated to the humanities by infusing them directly into a design curriculum. The pathway could culminate in an Entrepreneurship Incubator for students interested in this outcome.
YEAR 1: Create and approve the proposed critical design strategy curriculum (there is already a draft of this sitting in the core committee since 2022) and identify a cohort of 25-30 incoming freshmen who want to participate in a pilot of this pathway. Simultaneously, tell the story of our new core pathway grounded in real-world design skills within a deeply contextualized, critical thinking framework that is unlike any other common core in the country, where these are still tethered to old-fashioned general education mindsets that are out of synch with contemporary culture. Trumpet our fearlessness in adapting collegiate traditions to the 21st century and invite disruption investors to track and invest in our progress and success (see below). Do all of this in summer 2026 and guide the first cohort through their experience in 2026-2027.
YEAR 2: Launch the second-year suite of critical design strategy courses and admit a second elective cohort for AY 2027-2028. Solicit national stories about this major transformation in how we are approaching a higher education common core.
YEAR 3: Launch the third-year suite of critical design strategy courses and admit a third elective cohort for Academic Year 2028–2029. Simultaneously, tracking job placement outcomes, career readiness indicators, and market confidence for participating students in order to strengthen and amplify the narrative surrounding critical design strategy and workforce preparedness. As the first cohort approaches graduation in 2030, utilize placement data, employer engagement, and student success outcomes to attract strategic investors and industry partners interested in supporting specific students and talent pathways. Additionally, pilot a sponsorship model in which companies invest in educational pathways in exchange for early talent recruitment, internship opportunities, and potential hiring pipelines.
Strategic Objectives Interface: This initiative will improve student experience, differentiate our academic portfolio, drive brand engagement, increase partnerships, and potentially improve financial sustainability through the pursuit of innovative forms of philanthropy.
Financial Implications of the Initiative: The initiative does not require major new financial investment. The pilot can start small and leverage existing budgets carved out from within those currently designated to the common core.