Colleges - Structure
What is the purpose of Colleges?
The Colleges/Divisions system does the following:
Identifies at least one faculty member for any given student who will be well suited to advise them on their projects and progress.
Delineates skill sets that students may wish to acquire.
Makes the skill ecosystem apparent to students and gives them experience working in a team oriented work environment.
Makes the need for collaboration apparent through the identification of multiple necessary areas of expertise.
Simplifies course selection and graduation requirements.
What is a College?
To fulfill the goals identified above, the Innovative Minds Academy has implemented a College system which strongly categorizes courses, and weakly categorizes faculty members and students. The four Colleges (College of Inquiry, College of Innovation, College of Presentation, College of Sustainability) identify the purpose of the skill sets acquired in each College, and the constituent divisions identify the skill sets themselves. Each course is identified by a division within a College. E.g. Video Game Production is in the Division of Automation in the College of Innovation, and faculty members will be associated with the divisions and Colleges of the courses they teach. Students will be electively associated with a College, identifying their preference over project focus, and also identifying which faculty members will be serving as their advisors. Projects will be publicized through each of the involved Colleges, each with a separate focus on the relevant aspects of the project.
How does the Innovative Minds Academy prevent unnecessary separation?
The primary risk of the College system is that it will encourage or enforce unnecessary separation of faculty, students, and ideas. To prevent this, the Innovative Minds Academy has implemented a number of practices to encourage cross fertilization of ideas:
Innovative Minds Academy will host monthly project presentations for the entire academy and community (a bazaar).
Before graduating, students must earn at least twelve credits from each of the Colleges (at least 3 from each division). (Credits can be earned from multiple Colleges for the same project.)
Faculty members suggest cross College projects for continuous improvement of the Innovative Minds Academy at least once per semester.