Open: NCIIA 14th Annual Conference

The 2007 inaugural address of RIT's ninth president, William Destler, highlighted the breadth and diversity of curricular offerings at RIT from business, engineering, and computing to design, fine art, and craft. In his address, Dr. Destler included this challenge: "What if RIT students had the experience of working on complex societal problems with students from different majors on teams in...a cross-disciplinary effort to find real solutions?" The authors of this paper took that challenge to heart. In the 2008-09 academic year, we created a collaboration curriculum that was hosted by the RIT Honors program. The outcome of the program is an integrated "innovation suite" comprised of the following components: 1. innovation activities, 2. collaborative learning environments 3. collaborative technologies 4. learning outcomes and curricular models for innovation and 5. community-university partnerships. This integrated suite of innovation components will continue to grow in the new Center for Student Innovation at RIT.