We were not accustomed to this.

Over the next four days, it only got better as we thoroughly enjoyed every presidential couple we met. They talked about things that mattered, and, most importantly, they cared deeply about students and the future of their institutions. We could not have asked for a better introduction to the President’s Office

However, after a few days of reflection, I realized something was gnawing at me. I sensed a reticence in myself, and perhaps among a few of my colleagues, to speak openly about things we were doing to improve our individual colleges. Sharing ideas, plans, and “the next big thing on our campus” made us vulnerable and, perhaps worse, might give others an opportunity to implement our ideas on their campus first. Maybe I was wrong, but this is how I felt.

This all changed in 2015 when former Lasell University President Michael Alexander invited me to a meeting with eight other presidents to begin sharing courses in an effort to increase our academic offerings and majors without needing to hire additional faculty and staff. This was the beginning of the Lower Cost Models Consortium (LCMC), a group of more than 100 colleges and universities engaged in program sharing through a platform called Rize that was incubated on my campus. This group was highly collegial, creative, and served to push me from my early days of keeping my cards close to my vest.

But this chapter is not about the LCMC, or even program sharing per se. Instead, I want to talk about what happened on my campus when we finally let down our guard and genuinely sought to work with others. I want to talk about the unexpected wins, the surprising creativity we unleashed, and the new world that opened up to us when we gave ourselves permission to be surprised by the fruits of collaboration. Collaboration begets innovation, and innovation begets more innovation. This virtuous cycle has been a boon on my campus, and I believe it can be transformative for all colleges, especially smaller institutions.

 Collaboration begets innovation, and innovation begets more innovation.   

My first dose of serendipity struck a few years after Adrian College decided to launch a computer science degree using program sharing through the LCMC. Today, Adrian has nearly 50 students majoring in our Computer Science program, and we’ve hired two computer science professors who oversee the program alongside courses taught through the consortium.

While the program looks like an obvious addition in retrospect, it was one of our first forays into program sharing and came with hesitation. One of the primary concerns my campus had was that Adrian’s new collaboration might outsource our innovation and individuality.

Instead, the opposite has happened. This past year, our two computer science professors told me that course-sharing gave them time to create a new master's program—and potentially our first-ever doctoral program. These professors have also created several new courses in artificial intelligence for the upcoming fall semester and have helped us roll out new robotics scholarships to attract students in STEM. These things would not have been possible with the typical teaching, mentorship, and research load of an instructor at a small college. However, by embracing collaboration as leverage and a multiplier on their time, these instructors have created something new, different, unanticipated, and needed at our college to grow enrollment.

This type of academic innovation story is not unique to Adrian. A colleague of mine in the Midwest told me that introducing the concept of program-sharing on her campus inspired her faculty to create six additional new programs—more than they had launched in the prior decade combined. Another colleague told me that adding an artificial intelligence minor through the consortium has spurred faculty to develop complementary courses that explore AI through a Christian worldview. Other colleagues have told me that their college has improved assessment and learning design practices by learning from others in the consortium. A collaborative model that once concerned many faculty as a potential risk to quality has become a standard of excellence and a bar to aspire to.

Beyond academic innovation, I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the creativity that collaboration has brought to our enrollment office. A few years ago, our Dean of Enrollment convinced me that our expanded online catalog in high-demand fields, driven through course sharing, is perfect for high school students interested in dual enrollment. In previous years, high school kids needed to drive to campus to attend class, but our Dean of Enrollment saw how much Adrian students were enjoying their online courses. Now, these high school students can also take classes at home. Our dual enrollment numbers doubled in the first year. That same dean has leveraged an engineering dual-degree partnership with the University of North Dakota to recruit more than 25 freshmen in our latest class. We’ve wanted to offer engineering on our campus for many years but could never afford to do so. One can only imagine how many prospective students we’ve lost because we could not offer an engineering dual-degree. Now prospective students learn they can attend Adrian and major in electrical, mechanical, petroleum, and a host of other engineering majors while attending our school. Finally, this partnership mindset has extended into the community college space, where we have begun more actively mapping transfer pathways with local institutions. Once the ball got rolling on the first few partnerships, I watched my colleagues proactively seek out other avenues of growth. Ultimately, embracing collaboration has allowed our enrollment team to recruit students we never would have been able to reach. They’ve also embraced collaboration as an extension of Adrian’s innovative and student-centered brand—something that resonates with students and families.

 Ultimately, embracing collaboration has allowed our enrollment team to recruit students we never would have been able to reach. They’ve also embraced collaboration as an extension of Adrian’s innovative and student-centered brand—something that resonates with students and families.   

Unexpected benefits have rippled as far out as our advancement office. Our Vice President for Development noticed how students in these shared online courses valued the flexibility of the recordings. It meant they were never at a disadvantage to other students simply because they were not able to attend a particular class time due to work, sports, or some other conflict. And so he decided to kick off a capital campaign that was able to raise enough money to modify every one of our on-campus classrooms with the recording technology necessary to make this true for all of our own courses as well.

I didn’t see any of this coming; none were my ideas. But a simple yes to working with other colleges and experimentation opened members of our own campus to the possibility of innovation and questioning the way we have done things in the past, to great effect.

While every college campus is different, I believe there are a few core principles to the success we have been fortunate to experience at Adrian that are worthy of consideration:

1. Embrace change. I have a quote in my office that reads, “To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” It is easy to say no to change. Or to shoot down new ideas. Or to do things on your own rather than attempting to place trust in a partner. Not everything you try will work. There will be bumps. And some things will fail. However, that mindset will not be helpful as we collectively attempt to build a new, creative, and financially sustainable way forward for all of our colleges. Most of us can’t afford the status quo or to attempt to solve our problems in isolation.
2. Build a tolerance for failure. Collaborative innovation implies vulnerability and the risk of semi-public failure. There is no getting around that if the results of new ideas were certain, they would not be new. But the status quo in higher education today is too perilous. We cannot afford to take the much larger risk and sit on our hands while the business model continues to stagnate and erode. Counterintuitively, tolerating small failures now is the only way to avoid large failures in the future. And in my experience, people quickly forget small failures but reliably remember the wins.
3. Collaborative innovation is an asymmetric bet. It is easy to calculate the cost of a new innovative project, and so your costs are measurable and capped. But in my experience, every successful collaborative innovation we have undertaken has led to more upside than I expected at the outset. This is largely due to the power of setting an example of saying “yes” and the generative and impossible-to-predict offshoots that result. And so the calculus on these investments is almost always more favorable and less risky than we expect.
4. Innovation is contagious. Taking risks, and doing so publicly via partnership, will encourage others on your campus to participate in innovation. You begin this process when you are the first mover, the first person to say yes. Give the talented individuals on your campus the permission to be bold and to create change by doing so yourself and then being receptive to their initial forays.