Last week the campus hosted the very first Changemaker Day, an event that gathered students and faculty from the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Division, as well as Ashoka Fellows. This activity was the conclusion of a semester long challenge in which students applied their skills and knowledge to design solutions to local social problems in Zapopan Guadalajara. The winners of the challenge presented their idea solutions in a Rocket Pitch format while Ashoka Fellows shared their own experiences as social entrepreneurs and gave key pointers and suggestions to the changemakers of today and tomorrow.

Isaac Lucatero, ITESM Guadalajara’s visionary Change Leader is striving to accomplish an institutional makeover, assembling a Campus wide change team and creating synergies with Ashoka Fellows. No doubt they will be giving us more to talk about.

The answer? Unmistakably, YES. From social impact initiatives such as an e-waste recycling center and urban micro-aquaponics systems to creative educational endeavors including storytelling for social change and a proposal for a cross-university masters in changemaking, the Ashoka U Exchange community has been busy.

Thanks to our partnership with GOOD, the top three ideas (one winner decided by a public vote and two selected by Ashoka) have been awarded free registrations to share their progress at the 2013 Exchange.

Join us in congratulating these innovators who created the most impact since the Exchange!

Co.space: Spud Marshall, Executive Director of the New Leaf Initiative, decided that changemakers can “do life better, together.” He developed a video proposal, a website, and secured a house as a co-living environment to connect passionate social innovators with young professionals and experienced mentors. They are now accepting applications for Penn State University students for the fall – and the model is replicable.

Turning students into well-paid professional changemakers: After leading a workshop at the Exchange, Mrim Boutla, co-founder and Managing Partner at More Than Money Careers, realized that few participants were aware of the wide range of career opportunities to “do well while doing good.” As a result, she developed 12 self-paced coaching modules to help students prepare for well-paying values-driven careers.

AYZH SisterFriend Safe Birth Kits: Ashoka Fellow and founder of the Birthing Project, Kathryn Hall-Trujillo discovered student allies from Tulane University and the University of Virginia. As a truly cross-campus and cross-country initiative, they will develop AYZH SisterFriend Safe Birth Kits, assembled with the help of women in India, to impact the lives of more than 50,000 pregnant women in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Check out all 15 impressive stories of impact and get ready to share your own ideas to change yourself, change your campus, and to change the world at the 2013 Ashoka U Exchange at the University of San Diego.

This year, Middlebury College has been honored to launch our new Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship. At our first Annual Symposium, we welcomed over 100 participants for three days of sharing and collaboration. It was a rich, rewarding gathering. We were thrilled to have so many of you here on our campus to share your experiences with social entrepreneurship education at many of the world’s top colleges and universities. At a follow up workshop at the AshokaU exchange in February, our team – in our role as an Ashoka Changemaker Campus – was able to further explore the promise of social entrepreneurship in the liberal arts (in front of a packed house; it’s clear that folks on all kinds of campuses relish the chance to talk about the coming-together of these two ideals.) All of these conversations have helped us immensely as we have kicked off our Center’s many programs in the last three months.

Now we’d like to give back. On June 11-13, 2012, the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship will host a faculty and staff forum on social entrepreneurship in the liberal arts. The forum will take place at Middlebury’s beautiful Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, VT over three days, beginning at noon on Monday and running thru post lunch on Wednesday. (The cost will be $250.00 per person, which will cover participant’s lodging and meals.)

Why now? It’s clear that students on campuses all around the world are ablaze with the calling of being a social entrepreneur. This forum is being held to encourage conversation and collaboration about what has worked, what hasn’t, and – most importantly – what faculty and staff hope to achieve in the year or two that’s ahead. We are particularly keen on welcoming colleagues from New England colleges and universities; we hope that this is the first of a regular series of gatherings for colleagues in this extended area, building on the success of the AshokaU Exchange model.

At this forum, we look forward to exploring what we all have all learned about social entrepreneurship in the liberal arts (see the links below to two related essays below from Faculty Director Jon Isham.) But do know that this invite is by no means restricted to those working on campuses like ours. Above all, we see this as an opportunity for like-minded educators to reflect, to share, and to plan. And as you may be able to tell from the attached flyer, our Bread Loaf campus is an ideal place to do all three!

You may register for the Forum here.

On social entrepreneurship in the liberal arts
On putting the liberal arts to work

Schwartz is vice president at Ashoka, the global organization that works to ensure that social entrepreneurs and their innovations inspire a generation of changemakers to help sustain and support large scale social change. In this groundbreaking book, she presents a time-tested model that any individual leader or organization can apply to bring about deep, lasting, and systematic change, based on five principles:

1) Restructure Industry Norms
2) Change Market Dynamics
3) Use Market Forces to Create Social Value
4) Advance Full Citizenship
                                       5) Cultivate Empathy

These actionable principles are brought to life by the book’s compelling stories of everyday people who have made real changes around the globe. Throughout the book, Schwartz provides a blueprint to demonstrate how anyone, anywhere, can become an effective changemaker. Rippling presents some of today’s most innovative and effective approaches to solving social and environmental challenges, and clearly demonstrates that when empathy, creativity, passion, and persistence are combined, significant, life-altering progress is indeed possible.

For a limited time Ashoka is offering a signed copy of Rippling by the author Beverly Schwartz and Ashoka Founder and Chairman Bill Drayton with an inscription of your choice with every $100 donation.

Rippling is also available at Amazon.com , BN.com, and your local retailers.

I admit it. At the Ashoka U Exchange I was a little star struck. Some people get googley-eyed and weak-kneed at the sight of movie stars and musicians. But me? It’s social entrepreneurs who get me feelin’ giddy. Over 80 social entrepreneurs, including a handful of Ashoka Fellows, recently convened at the Ashoka U Exchange along with students, faculty, and others. You might ask: What is it about social entrepreneurs that make me swoon? Well, although plenty of them are good lookin’, what was most attractive about the social entrepreneurs I was fortunate to meet at the Exchange was way these incredible innovators mange to maintain a genuine humility and willingness to collaborate with others, including students, even when they have reached an elevated level of success.

We have come to expect that success merits a certain amount of distance and exclusivity. All too often the secrets to success are exactly that – secret – or at least not widely and openly shared. Social entrepreneurs are teaching all of us the value of collaborating across traditional divides in academia, business, philanthropy, technology, and even within ourselves.

Many of the social entrepreneurs who attend the Exchange have put incredible ideas into action and made a real impact on our world’s most pressing challenges. And yet, they don’t claim to have it all figured out. Instead, they continue to ask questions, seek input, and explore new opportunities for continual improvement and collaboration.

As a student, it can be difficult to see yourself as someone who can have a real impact, especially when you start comparing yourself to those who’ve already made their mark. But at the Exchange, students at all different points in their academic careers, from all different disciplines, had the opportunity to interact with people who’s books we’ve read, who organizations we’ve studies and who have inspire us to think big! Although the social entrepreneurs at the Exchange came from a wide range of fields, the message consistently came from all was, don’t wait! Right now YOU can change yourself, your community, and your world.

Take Ashoka Fellow Kathryn Hall-Trujillo for example. Hall-Trujillo is the founder of The Birthing Project, a non-profit building a social support system that allows black women to support each other and as a result have healthier babies and healthier lives. In New Orleans, Hall-Trujillo has partnered with Tulane University and is changing the way campuses engage with their surrounding communities and teaching students that they can make an impact right where they live.

On perhaps the other end of the spectrum, Saul Garlick, founder of ThinkImpact and his team at the Think Impact’s award winning Innovation Institute are working to transform the study abroad experience into a world-changing experience. Each summer they send students on a full-immersion experiential learning program in rural Africa where students learn about social entrepreneurship and innovation through intensive qualitative research and hands-on exploration.

Social entrepreneurs like Hall-Trujillo, Garlick, and so many others are opening up opportunities for students to engage with communities, ask questions, test ideas, and discover their passions. This approach has the potential to help students unlock their potential and have an impact while they are still in school, as opposed to “how can I have an impact?” being something students are left to face when they cross the commencement stage.

In addition to a pocket full of business cards, participating in the Exchange gave me with a renewed courage to overcome the fear that I don’t know enough yet to have a real impact. And though the many Ashoka Fellows and social entrepreneurs I was reminded that true “success” includes having the compassion and humility to remain engaged in a continual process of learning, adjusting, improving, and remaining open to others – especially those who are different than you.

So, don’t wait. Follow up on those contacts that you made at the Exchange or spark up some new ones. Share your stories of discovery and impact at the Ashoka U GOOD Maker Campaign by Wednesday, April 11, 2012. As we tell our stories, we will grow together, gain new insights, and collaborate in the spirit of the Ashoka “everyone a changemaker” vision.

The Award highlights teaching and partnership practices that are innovative, replicable, and that make a significant impact on society.

• Duke University’s “Social Entrepreneurship in Action” course developed and taught by Tony Brown of the Duke Enterprising Leadership Initiative.

• Urban Innovation Challenge in New Orleans developed by Stephanie Barskdale with Tulane University’s Social Entrepreneurship Initiatives and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

• ThinkImpact’s Innovation Institute full-immersion social entrepreneurship education program hosted in rural Africa and founded by Saul Garlick of ThinkImpact.

• ALTIS Joint Venture MBA in Social Entrepreneurship and Management between three institutions from Italy, India, and Kenya launched by Mario Molteni, Frank Cinque and Stefano Guidotti of ALTIS – Universitá Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – Milan (Italy)

• Berkeley MBA Microfinance Simulcast Course initiated and led by Sean Foote of Berkeley’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Center for Executive Education.

• University Innovation Fellowship for institutional innovation created and led by Kimberly de los Santos of the Arizona State University Office of University Initiatives.

From over 80 award nominations submitted, a prestigious panel with significant experience in both social entrepreneurship and leadership development selected these top six innovations. The panel consisted of Tim Brodhead, former President of the J.W. McConnell Foundation; Christy Chin, Portfolio Director at the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation; Judith Cone, Special Assistant to the President for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Ron Cordes, Co-Founder of the Cordes Family Foundation; Jorge de la Torre, Director of Institutional Relations at Santander; Derek Ellerman, Ashoka Fellow and founder of the Polaris Project; Rich Leimsider, Director of Fellow and Alumni Programs at Echoing Green; David Lipkin, Principal of Business Development at Method; Jennifer Ratay, Program Director for the Hewlett Foundation; and Diana Wells, President of Ashoka.

At the cutting edge of disruptive innovation in higher education, the 2012 Ashoka U Innovation Awards distinguish themselves by embracing innovative community partnerships, online open courseware, and large-scale institutional change for maximum social impact.

Connecting Campus and Community  ||  Tony Brown and Stephanie Barksdale

Tony Brown of Duke University’s Hart Leadership Program had a vision to move beyond the theory of social change and use social entrepreneurship as a vehicle for student and community development. His course, “Social Entrepreneurship in Action,” helps students combine analysis, action, and personal passion to develop new social initiatives. Supporting and guiding students through the challenge of creating real results – and holding them accountable for doing so – can lead to meaningful development in the areas of agency, efficacy, and changemaker identity. In its twelfth semester, Duke celebrates nearly 60 student-led social ventures that benefit the Duke and Durham communities, many of which are still active today.

Tulane’s Urban Innovation Challenge (UIC), led by Stephanie Barksdale, has also built a strong connection between the university, individual innovators university and the community by supporting and funding community partners to further develop their social change ideas., and community improvement. Launched in 2011, UIC the program selected their first four “Urban Innovators” to research, test, and develop solutions to social challenges in the New Orleans community. Innovators’ funds are contingent upon the execution of their accountability plans, and Tulane staff and other mentors meet with them quarterly to give feedback and advice. UIC With support from Tulane, these fellows are making a big impact, and they have proof to show it: Its potential is tangibly measured by jobs created, pounds of food produced, dollars saved on retirement benefits, and houses rebuilt.

Student Innovation in Developing Countries  ||  Saul Garlick and Stefano Guidotti

Saul Garlick’s ThinkImpact Innovation Institute teams up hundreds of students with entrepreneurs in rural Africa to develop a sustainable local economy. Together, visiting students and entrepreneurs identify resources, brainstorm life-changing solutions and ultimately create and test new products and services that can be sold locally. The entrepreneurs will continue to build these enterprises long after students complete their Institute. Based on the values of empathy, curiosity, and asset-based venture creation, this unique model extracts inherent local resources and talent. ThinkImpact brings students from universities across the country to the convergence of cultures, languages and histories. Through ThinkImpact, economic development inspires true global collaboration on a face-to-face level.

The ALTIS MBA in Social Entrepreneurship and Management, founded by Mario Molteni, Frank Cinque and Stefano Guidotti, leverages a “joint venture” model among three academic institutions from Italy, India, and Kenya. Selected based on the strength of their proposed business idea, MBA candidates from Sub-Saharan Africa take a mix of distance learning courses with lecturers from around the world. In lieu of the pencil-and-paper final exam, students present a fully-fledged business plan to partners and investors in Nairobi. To date, the program has launched 38 entrepreneurial activities by students from 14 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Programs include the empowerment of coffee farmers in Uganda, the production of bio-fertilizers in Ghana, the creation of sustainable bamboo furniture in Ethiopia and micro-health insurance in Nigeria.

Scaling Social Entrepreneurship Education  ||  Sean Foote

Sean Foote, creator of the Berkeley MBA Microfinance Simulcast Course, coupled the advent of online learning with the growing international interest in social entrepreneurship education.  Foote, an experienced venture capitalist and professor of entrepreneurship at Berkeley, saw that many universities lacked access to social entrepreneurship education resources. His online microfinance course has filled this void in over 100 universities for the past five years. Students can run stand-alone sessions, or it can supplement existing coursework on any campus. Foote plans to expand the model to other subjects such as impact investing.

Crafting a Culture of Innovation  ||  Kimberly de los Santos

At Arizona State University, Kimberly de los Santos seeks to lead a cultural revolution through the University Innovation Fellowship, which brings the best and brightest “Innovation Fellows” to serve as the entrepreneurial arm of the ASU president’s office. These catalysts for change are selected from a pool of high performing policy makers, researchers, writers, and designers, forming a cross-disciplinary team to advance ASU’s vision of a New American University. The Fellows’ main goals are to meet the needs of Phoenix, catalyze social change, encourage innovation, conduct solution-oriented research, focus on student success, transcend academic silos, advance social embeddedness, and engage globally.

These six Ashoka U – Cordes Innovation Awardees were recognized by the president of Ashoka, Diana Wells, and Co-Founder of the Cordes Foundation, Ron Cordes, on the evening of February 11^th at the Ashoka U Exchange, to an audience of over 400 participants representing 100 colleges and universities from over 15 countries.

The bar has just been set.

This is the sixth of a series of posts featuring Exchange participants and their understanding of “Disruptive Innovation in Higher Education”. This week we will be featuring Dale Stephens, Chief Educational Deviant of UnCollege.

The landscape of education reform in the United States is turbulent, and there may be no idea more radical than that of 20-year-old Dale Stephens: He thinks you don’t need to go to college.

Stephens is the leader of UnCollege, a social crusade that challenges the commonly-accepted notion that a college degree is the only vehicle for success in today’s world. Grounded in the belief that higher education doesn’t always provide the inspiration, curriculum, or opportunities young people need to succeed in the world, UnCollege operates under a simple premise: higher education needs a makeover.

Traditional education systems aren’t getting the job done—the U.S. high-school graduation rate somehow remains below 70 percent—which is why visionary innovations for 21^st century learning are so important (even if attending college isn’t part of the picture). “I think this need to go to college is tied very closely with the American dream—owning a car, buying a house,” Stephens said. “But increasingly today, we’re becoming less and less interested in those things.”

Instead, we’re interested in living lives full of truly engaging learning experiences. We’re interested in succeeding in the world and making a name for ourselves.

Stephens is passionate about developing a space for people to pursue all of those things and more. He’s less concerned about the latest trend in education reform than he is about being a catalyst behind empowering students to take charge of their education.

Stephens’ take on higher education might shock some, but there are well-respected leaders who share his thinking. Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal, started a foundation that encourages college-bound grads to chase their dreams instead of degrees; fellows are armed with $100,000 and given two years to change the world, one business venture at a time.

Tech giant Apple Inc. has also entered the market for independent, innovative education. Apple’s iTunesU is one of the easiest ways to design and distribute courses for K-12 and college students, and it’s available free with an all-new app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

Stephens boasts an untraditional academic trajectory himself. He left school in sixth grade, and skipped middle school in exchange for unschooling (or self-directed learning). He enrolled in Hendrix College in Arkansas but became very frustrated because he found people “more interested in getting degrees than in learning.”

Stephens began talking with other students who had the same grievances towards the ineffectiveness of higher education, and decided to do something about it. He registered a website and started writing.

One week later, he was met with a barrage of media attention. Since then, his ideas, writing, and leadership have cultivated a community of students who want to hack their education for something more meaningful than a college degree.

Stephens is currently authoring a book called “Hacking Your Education,” about how a college degree is not a prerequisite for success or happiness. The book supports the belief that you should be able to control what, why, and how you learn.

It tells the stories of inspiring people from around the country who are instigating change in their discipline because they didn’t go to college, not despite the fact. It debunks the belief that to be competent and reliable, a person needs a $40,000-a-year tuition bill.

There are many reasons the average person aspires to attend college. But what does that diploma mean? Does it mean you’ve developed the competencies and reputation needed to truly succeed in the real world, or simply that you’ve managed to get through the “system” and checked the right boxes along the way?

The common thread among the people he’s interviewing, Stephens said, is that “they didn’t rely on school” to start learning. They didn’t take “no” for an answer and were willing to take charge of their education.

They didn’t drop out of school because they lacked intelligence, drive, or because it was too hard. They did it because they wanted to control their education.

According to Stephens, the UnCollege movement isn’t about a radical rejection of the entire institution of education. The UnCollege website asserts that they don’t want to “end university, raze classrooms, burn books, or fire professors.” Instead, the movement strives to alter the perceptions of how our society sees the value of a degree.

The UnCollege Manifesto, which is a 25-page document outlining the principles of this movement, provides some insight into how it all works, and how the current infrastructure of universities is failing our students.

“We’re about proving that you can live a happy, productive live without getting diploma,” Stephens said. “The argument goes that if you want to be successful, you should go to college since graduates earn more money than non-graduates.

“The entire system doesn’t have to come down tomorrow. So much of change is incremental, and there is definitely potential to make the current system better.”

And UnCollege has become a key player in that change. The amount of traction it’s developed in the last year is a harbinger for what’s to come. Since it became public in January of 2011, UnCollege has gathered 6,000 fans on Facebook, 6,000 people on its email list, and about 2,000 unique visits each day on its website, www.uncollege.org.

UnCollege is launching coaching and a guidebook this spring, running a “Learning to Hack Your Education Month” this summer, and creating an UnCollege fellowship in the fall of 2013 to provide a somewhat structured experience for people who want to leave college. And with his book deal and message, Stephens has flown across the world many times over to speak and share at conferences.

So what can we learn from UnCollege, and from the story of a 20-year-old called a “drop-out entrepreneur” by The New York Times who will be speaking at TEDxAshokaU this weekend in Phoenix?

Passion makes everything. Standards can be challenged. And the most important driver in success is the willingness to say “no” when someone tries to take your educational opportunities away.

“You don’t need to rely on teachers, parents, or schools,” he said. “ Nobody has to tell you what to learn, and you don’t need to wait on a degree to start tinkering.”

This is the fifth in a series of posts featuring Ashoka U Exchange participants discussing “Disruptive Innovation in Higher Education.” This week we feature Linda Kay Klein,  Director of Work on Purpose at Echoing Green.

Linda Kay Klein and the Work on Purpose team have a non-traditional definition of career. “Frankly, I don’t even like the word career,” Klein told me, “when we say career, what we mean is the overlap between how you self-identify, and how you spend your time. It could mean a whole spectrum of things that make up who you are and how you live your life.”

For 25 years, Echoing Green has been an early stage investor in high potential individuals. During their first 15 years, while people didn’t necessarily know the name Echoing Green, they certainly knew the names of their Fellows who went on to launch incredible organizations such as Teach for America, City Year, College Summit, Public Allies, Op-ed Project and many more. Some of their Fellows go on to become Ashoka Fellows. About ten years ago, however, Echoing Green “went through this crisis period; we considered really closing down our doors as we lost one of our two major funders.”

Echoing Green ultimately committed to revolutionizing their fund-raising efforts, allowing the organization to continue their flagship Fellowship program which seeds and supports a new cadre of social entrepreneurs each year. Over time, the organization grew exponentially and was able to conceptualize new programs.

“We started to think about how we could increase our impact in the world,” Klein continued. Clearly, the Fellows were out doing great work around the world, but it still appeared there was more to be done.

“Meanwhile, people were coming to us separately who didn’t want to start organizations, yet they were the kind of people who wanted to have the kind of lives and kind of careers that our Fellows had.”

It seemed that there weren’t many paths for people to take who wanted to have a career in social change – if you want to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or an architect, there is a path you can take; however, if you want to change the world, and that’s your guiding principle, there probably isn’t a paved road.

Klein and her team started to ask, “What did our Fellows have that allowed them to succeed at that?” The answers formed a book, titled Work on Purpose, that tells five Echoing Green Fellows’ stories in a framework of “heart + head = hustle.” Heart asks what really moves you, while head addresses your skills and abilities, and extends into what your unique insights are and experiences you have that others do not.

“We found that all of our Fellows’ stories had periods in which their heart and their head were imbalanced, or what we call out of whack, in which their work wasn’t hustling. It wasn’t working for them,” Klein recalled.

“When we talk about hustle, what we mean is you’re loosing track of time, you’re doing the work you’d do for free, even if you’re getting paid for it; you’re in the zone: it’s bliss.”

In the first book that Echoing Green put out, called Be Bold, “we identified something called the ‘moment of obligation’. That’s when you’re in one of those moments where you’re faced with what your work is to do in the world.” Such moments seem to come out of inflexion points – where efforts between the head and the heart are not in sync. But these inflexion points, which often occur in the college years, can create a raw environment where you have the greatest opportunity to merge your head and your heart, to create that blissful state: hustle.

Work on Purpose extends beyond the book with workshops, keynotes, and curriculum tools that can be used in both university and nonprofit settings to help individuals discover their noble purpose. University students are often in a point of inflexion, which makes the topics of Work on Purpose highly relevant.

Klein is looking forward to the Exchange for the opportunity to communicate this very new Work on Purpose initiative to the wider Exchange audience, as Echoing Green has never been known for this type of programming. “There isn’t a specific population that will be at the Exchange that I’m not interested in talking to… it’s like this perfect population flux in so many ways,” Klein said.

In her workshop, titled “I want a meaningful career – not just a job: helping students find their work on purpose,” Linda will be giving Exchange participants an inside preview to the curriculum, along with Scott Sherman, executive director of the Transformative Action Network. Klein is excited to get feedback during the workshop, and to engage participants in the long term visioning and development of the curriculum. Linda will also put up the beta version of the curriculum on Pathable, the private social network set up specifically for Exchange participants.

While Echoing Green defines a social entrepreneur as someone who starts a business, it’s not the only way to exist in the field of social entrepreneurship. There’s a difference between being a social entrepreneur and being socially entrepreneurial or existing in the social entrepreneurship space, Klein said, and “we need the entire ecosystem of social innovation and social change and of people who care to be able to support all of these things.”

If we could shift the way that people look at their careers, and their paths over the long term, by using a lens of internal and external impact, we could completely change the way the world operates.