The New School

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND SOCIAL INNOVATION
Changemaker Campus since Fall 2009

The New School (TNS) is a legendary progressive university of eight schools bound by a common, unusual intent: to prepare and inspire its 10,510 undergraduate and graduate students and 6,350 nontraditional adult learners to bring actual, positive change to the world. From its Greenwich Village campus, The New School launches world citizens – individuals whose ideas and innovations forge new paths of progress in the arts, design, humanities, public policy, and the social sciences.

The New School’s unique approach to social entrepreneurship and social innovation rests on a collaborative engagement of three schools: Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy, Parsons The New School for Design, and Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts. Teaching focuses on the intersection of creativity and design, social justice, policy, community development and management. Michele Kahane, Professor of Professional Practice and change leader for the TNS Changemaker Campus team, summarizes TNS goals for Changemaker Campus saying: “We look for innovative solutions to critical social and environmental challenges. It’s about how to lead change and innovation. Those are the skills that students need: collaborative interdisciplinary problem-solving and leadership skills.”
By championing TNS as a Changemaker Campus, Michele became a change agent within the institution. “I decided to focus on getting the Provost office, deans, faculty and the chair of my program on board,” she says. TNS has a long history of community engagement that seeks to address urban social and environmental problems. “I became involved in a provost-level working group on civic engagement. Civic engagement ended up being a good leverage point for moving things forward. I see social entrepreneurship on a continuum with civic engagement of how social change can be brought to life on campus.” The Provost office’s working group on civic engagement and social innovation has now been formalized and includes diverse divisions at the university. “I made a proposal within that group to have a university-wide workshop to explore civic engagement and social innovation this year. This will help ramp up faculty engagement,” Michele says. “In addition, I have organized a group of faculty from several divisions to develop a joint funding proposal that would support curricular innovations and research focused on integrating the creative disciplines – design, media and performance arts – into community problem solving.”

Spotlight on Course Collaboration with Ashoka & Ashoka’s Changemakers.com

TNS has developed two graduate level course collaborations with Ashoka’s Changemakers.com program. The first is an Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship course. The assignment is for students to simulate the judging process that Ashoka conducts to select winners in their open source innovation competition. The simulation will be facilitated by an Ashoka staff member. The current competition focuses on sustainable and inclusive urban housing. Students in the advanced social entrepreneurship course work on a project to enhance the knowledge-building components of Changemakers.com from the perspective of catalyzing social innovation. “The project is highly energizing for students, they are doing what Ashoka does! Students love looking at innovations from a particular sector. They are beginning to understand patterns of social impact,” Michele says.