Creativity & Innovation

The Creative Courage Cohort for Faculty

At its core, creative confidence is about believing in your ability to create change in the world around you. It is the conviction that you can achieve what you set out to do. We think this self-assurance, this belief in your creative capacity, lies at the heart of innovation.”  

                                                                                              – David Kelley and Tom Kelley, Creative Confidence 

The Creative Courage Cohort

The Creative Courage Cohort is a year-long program that offers a cohort of faculty members opportunities to explore options for incorporating creative thinking and problem-solving activities that develop students’ creative confidence into their courses. This experience will especially benefit those who wish to align new or existing courses with the Creative Process general education requirement. 

The experience begins with a 2-day immersion session in August that exposes participants to various approaches which cultivate creative thinking, including instruction in creative problem-solving methodologies and guidance in developing a creative classroom setting. The final 90 minutes includes reflection and workshop time at SunWater Spa (created by a CC alum) immersing ourselves in the spaciousness of conversations in the cloud room or while in their mineral rich cedar tubs. We ask that participants commit to being at both full days of the immersion from 9:30 a.m-3:00 p.m., including lunch.  

After the immersion session, participants meet as a cohort for additional workshops, discussions, and activities. Cohort meetings will occur in week three in Blocks 1-4 (dates determined by cohort members). Then, the second semester consists of support from Creativity & Innovation staff to integrate creativity-building and creative problem-solving activities into their courses. Support includes offering syllabus development assistance and providing guidance and feedback as faculty members develop and practice creativity-related pedagogies that meet their courses’ specific learning goals.   

Each faculty member who completes the program will receive a summer course development grant of $2,000 to modify an existing course, or $4,000 to develop a new course (awarded the summer after completion). Successful program completion requires attending the immersion session, a total of three cohort meetings over the first semester, and mentoring over the second semester.

To Apply

Contact Kris Stanec, Director of Creativity & Innovation, kstanec@coloradocollege.edu by August 1st. In your application email, share your goals for participating in the Creative Courage Cohort and how it might enhance your teaching.

Philosophy

“The creative experience involves principled engagement with the unfamiliar and a willingness to approach the familiar in unfamiliar ways.” 

                                                                                                –Vlad P. Glaveanu  and Ronald A. Beghetto 

Bridging Different Types of Creativity

Creativity research tends to distinguish between personal (or generic) and disciplinary creativity. Personal creativity often shows up unconsciously in our daily lives, while disciplinary creativity often reflects particular thinking processes we learn within defined contexts. The Creative Courage Cohort intends to help students and faculty develop both types of creativity. The five-day immersion sessions for both cohorts will focus on personal creativity by cultivating vulnerability, stimulating self-reflection, and encouraging productive risk-taking. The workshops and discussions that students will take following the immersion will help them apply the skills they learned to specific problems or opportunities. Post-immersion programming for the faculty cohort will focus specifically on disciplinary creativity. Creativity & Innovation staff will collaborate with faculty to develop components for their classes that allow students to understand what creative thinking looks and feels like within each discipline. Our vision is that students and faculty members will have ample opportunity within the program, and during subsequent interactions within CC classes, to explore how they might ignite and amplify their creative thinking capacities within and across multiple contexts. In this way, our campus collective participates in students’ development arc. 

In our rapidly changing world, we face macro-problems that are “high-impact, global, long-term, and transdisciplinary.” (Ambrose & Sternberg, 2016). In an increasingly complex and interconnected world, many habitual forms of thinking no longer serve us. We must learn to navigate uncertainty by challenging assumptions and risking new behaviors. In this way, the profoundly anxiety-provoking crises of the twenty-first century can serve as essential catalysts for creative action. (Beghetto, 2021). The Creative Courage Cohort will help participants intentionally cultivate the ability to stay present with ambiguity so they might begin to find the possibilities within uncertainty. 

Creativity represents a critical capacity for all kinds of work (and play). The World Economic Forum identified creativity as one of the top three skills most in demand by employers for 2022. It seems there is a consensus that in a future where human skills exist alongside technical skills, creativity is not only key to navigating a highly volatile and increasingly complex business environment, but it is also an essential foundation for innovation and will help us resiliently navigate a future where automation is accelerating. According to McKinsey Quarterly (Chui et al., 2016), “work that requires a high degree of imagination, creative analysis, and strategic thinking is harder to automate.” By helping participants identify, augment, and articulate how they are creative, the Creative Courage Cohort experience will empower them to design, rather than accept, their futures. 

Research demonstrates that exercising our creativity enhances our well-being. For example, The British Journal of Clinical Psychology published a study indicating that when people are involved in creative activities, they experience heightened positive emotions. A University of Otago study revealed that the positive feelings people experience when engaged in creative pursuits can often lead them to seek additional creative outlets. Therefore, Creativity & Innovation aims to help CCC participants develop life-long creative practices that support their mental health. Moreover, because creativity is profoundly connected to our ability to empathize with others, we believe that creating cohorts of fellow learners will allow members to deepen their creative practices while establishing supportive bonds. 

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Supporting Research

Don Ambrose & Robert J. Sternberg, editors. Creative Intelligence in the 21st Century: Grappling with Enormous Problems and Huge Opportunities. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2016.  

Ronald A. Beghetto, “Structured Uncertainty: How Creativity Thrives Under Constraints and Uncertainty.” In Creativity Under Duress in Education?, edited by Carol A. Mullen, 27–40. Springer, Cham. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90272-2_2. 

Tamlin S. Conner, Colin G. DeYoung & Paul J. Silvia, “Everyday creative activity as a path to flourishing, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2018, (13) 2: 181–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1257049  

Helen Demetriou & Bill Nicholl, “Empathy is the mother of invention: Emotion and cognition for creativity in the classroom, Improving Schools, 2022, 25(1): 4–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/13654802219895 

Arne Dietrich, “Types of Creativity,” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2019, 26:1–12. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-018-1517-7   

Girija Kaimal, Hasan Ayaz, Joanna Herres, Rebekka Dieterich-Hartwell, Bindal Makwana. Donna H. Kaiser & Jennifer A. Nasser, “Functional near-infrared spectroscopy assessment of reward perception based on visual self-expression: Coloring, doodling, and free drawing,” The Arts in Psychotherapy, 2017, 55: 85 – 92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2017.05.004 0197-4556/  

Tom Kelly & David Kelly. Creative Confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within all of us. New York: Crown Business, 2013. 

Michael Chui, James Manyika, and Medhi Miremadi,  “Where machines could replace humans—and where they can’t (yet),” McKinsey Quarterly, 2016: 1-12. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/where-machines-could-replace-humans-and-where-they-cant-yet