Enhancing creativity on campus means students and faculty need to have open minds to communicate with different people, take part in social spaces and be innovative in the classroom, according to a panel of professors and administrators at a MUSE Project lecture on Tuesday.
Stephen Goldsmith, associate professor in Metropolitan and Urban Planning, said ideas and changes for the U start with students. As an example, he referred to 2010 student body president Erica Andersen, who began the change to “re-imagine” the Marriott Library Plaza from a blank, “ugly” cement area to a social space where students could sit at the red tables near the fountains.
This idea led to the university allowing food trucks on the plaza, where a long line of students now waits daily to grab some lunch. Goldsmith said these type of creative students have made physical transformations to the campus that affect the environmental, social and economical status of the U.
Change was an example of a student creating something from what the U lacked, Goldsmith said. He said good ideas for campus start with the students.
The panel emphasized the importance of communicating with others to create more ideas and take action on campus. This means both looking at new places and cities as well as sharing ideas in diverse spaces.
“There’s something that happens when we’re talking that we can’t do online,” said Sylvia Torti, dean of the Honors College. “I can’t have this kind of dialogue and bump up against ideas that are really different than mine.”
Goldsmith said there are barriers to the creative process, such as the loss of seeing the night skies, the isolation of coffee shops or other social spaces or communicating with only those who are of the same gender or race. He said in the academic atmosphere, a lot of deans do not like their students doing interdisciplinary work.
“Right now, the educational culture is a lot against us,” said Anne Jamison, associate professor in English. “Going in, I know what everybody’s going to learn, and once they learn that thing, I can stop. That doesn’t seem like a very creative way to go about learning.”
Jamison said as a university, we need to think about how to make an institution where it’s OK to fail sometimes. This would help enhance the creative process if the U students and faculty were not set on objectives and points such as in the grading system, she said.