Background and Motivation

The Bachelor of Innovation^TM family of programs is an interdisciplinary undergraduate program. Â  The Bachelors of Innovation^TM is actually a family structure, much like a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts, in which particular majors are defined.  The Bachelor of Innovation^TM is a very structured program with a common core in innovation, a cross-disciplinary core to help ensure the breadth needed for innovation, and an in-depth major field of study.  We begin with motivation on the need for such a radical new approach.

In its report, Innovate America, the National Innovation Initiative (NII) calls for an "innovation infrastructure" as the foundation for the nationÂ’s future productivity and competitiveness. The report notes: "Innovation generates the productivity that economists estimate has accounted for half of U.S. GDP growth over the past 50 years. ... ItÂ’s not only about offering new products and services, but also improving them and making them more affordable."

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) report on “Educating the Engineer of 2020” concludes:

“If the United States is to maintain its economic leadership and be able to sustain its share of high technology jobs, it must prepare for this wave of change. While there is no consensus at this stage, it is agreed that innovation is the key and engineering is essential to this task; but engineering will only contribute to success if it is able to continue to adapt to new trends and provide education to the next generation of students so as to arm them with the tools needed for the world as it will be, not as it is today.”

The NAE report goes on to state that there is

“an undercurrent of awareness that current complexities are so daunting that tinkering at the edges—reforming one course, one program, one department at a time, developing isolated instances of success here and there — is no longer a viable response if we are to build the kind of robust programs in research and education now needed to strengthen the U.S. engineering community by 2020.”

The need for a dramatic reform in engineering education is not something we are claiming, it is a nationally recognized need to which we are responding.  The comprehensive nature of the proposed Bachelor of Innovation^TM is directly in line with the NAE engineering 2020 guidelines. At a recent NAE-sponsored leadership event to which a team of University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) Engineering and Business faculty was invited, the ideas in the proposed BI program became a central focus of the meeting. 

The technology revolution and globalizations also have had a major impact on business; it is commonly acknowledged that business degrees need to adapt to incorporate the ever-changing technology landscape and the impact of globalization.

A 2006 survey sponsor by the Business Roundtable[1] found:

Ø      33% of opinion leaders and 18% of voters said improving U.S. science and technology capabilities to increase U.S. innovation and competitiveness is our countryÂ’s single most important objective;

Ø      62% of both groups said that addressing this problem is equally important to other challenges such as national security, transportation, health care, energy and the legal system;

Ø       76% of opinion leaders and 51% of American voters rank a focus on education as the most important way to solve the problem;

Ø       Only 5% of parents said they would try to persuade their child toward careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), while 65% said they would allow the child to pursue whatever career path he/she prefers and 27% said they would encourage the child to pursue a STEM career but balance it with the childÂ’s preference.

The last of these survey results may be the most disturbing.  While the problem of declining student enrollment in STEM  areas is widely acknowledged, parents will be giving their childrenÂ’s preference total, or at least a strong weight, in their career choices.  Thus, it is critical, if we are to change the tide flowing away from technology degrees, that we find a way to change the attractiveness of these fields. Â  Many of todayÂ’s students are not choosing majors based on potential careers but on interest and to help establish their independence and further their personal preferences.  It is not enough to teach well, we must motivate students and develop and market programs attractive to todayÂ’s students.  In a 2003 national survey commissioned by GE, only 9% of college students polled indicated that they felt the United States is doing enough to foster innovation among young people.  Central to the educational uniqueness of this program is the multi-year, multidisciplinary “teaming” experience that students will have. Students from different emphasis areas will be assigned to teams that will work on projects identified by local industries. These teams will work together towards a solution and a technology product that will impact society. The Bachelor of InnovationÂ’s unique long-term teaming will attract a different type of student.    The Bachelor of Innovation in Game Design and Development will attract students into a program that at first glance may not seem like a technology degree, but which contains significant technical rigor, particularly in computer science; one perspective would be to view this as a track within a computer science degree.  The social and fun factors of these new degrees reflect the changing demographics and preferences, yet the programs retain the rigor and self-learning abilities needed in tomorrowÂ’s leaders.

 The Bachelor of Innovation^TM family of programs directly addresses this national need and provides a unique program in the state and in the nation.  The uniqueness of the program, and the strong teaming nature, is expected to attract students that might otherwise forego technology degrees and, at the same time, to expose non-technology students to enough technology to make them better team players when working with technologists.  The Bachelor of Innovation^TM is not just preparation for a career it is about teaching critical thinking and transforming the students for their own continuing self-innovation. This family of degrees is unique enough that we propose to trademark (or more properly service mark) the name Bachelor of Innovation^TM to protect it as a marketing advantage.  Innovation is a commonly overused term, often confused with creativity, invention and research; innovation is something more. Â  Before describing the program in detail and its goals, we briefly introduce innovation. 

What is Innovation?

A simple definition of innovation is "introducing something new" (Merriam Webster dictionary). Note how this differs from invention, which is defined as "discovery or a device, contrivance or process originated after study and experimentation".  The key difference is that innovation means introducing the new thing to a group or to society.  It is not enough to invent-- the invention must be adopted and used to become an innovation. Consider the more detailed definition (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation):

"Innovation is the sequence of activities by which a new element is introduced into a social unit, with the intention of benefiting the unit, some part of it, or the wider society. The element needs not to be entirely novel or unfamiliar to members of the unit, but it must involve some discernible change or challenge of the status quo."

Innovation need not be technological. For example, when McDonald's applied the production line concept to producing restaurant food, it could use low-skilled workers and known technology to produce food quickly - thus innovating and changing our society. Today there are many US Business Method Patents, protecting business innovations with little or no technological novelty, just novel applications of technology to improve business and society.

Another definition is found in "London Innovation":

“Innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas and is a vital ingredient for competitiveness, productivity and social gain within businesses and organizations. Innovation involves the successful exploitation of new ideas in any setting. Indeed, it can be anything from changing a daily business procedure and designing a new product for sale to discovering a new drug that reduced heart disease.”

CBI Innovation and Trends Survey promotes this definition:

"The innovation process is the combination of activities - such as design, research, market investigation, process development, organizational restructuring, and employee development and so on - which are necessary to develop and support an innovative product or production process."

The goal of these new Bachelors of Innovation^TM majors is to go beyond simply teaching students about the innovation process.  It will involve them directly in the interdisciplinary nature of innovation projects working with real companies.  This experiential learning is a critical part of the program design because the innovation culture is critical to effective innovation, and to transforming the people involved.

Innovation is an attitude, a state of mind, and a creative process, as much as a specific task or action. Â  Effective innovation is more than just changing organizations.  As observed by Ralph Ardill, Marketing & Strategic Planning Director, Imagination at the London Innovation Conference, 2003:

“Once you've worked on a truly innovative project you realize how important transformation is to the success or failure of a project. Your way of thinking changes, your priorities change, your company changes and your way of working changes forever. True innovation is not just about changing a product, a service or even a marketplace; it's also about recognizing and relishing the need to change yourself." 

The Bachelor of Innovation^TM is not just preparation for a career it is about teaching critical thinking and transforming the students for their own continuing self-innovation.

A.  Program Description and Goals.

Similar to the way in which schools have collections of common requirements for a Bachelor of Arts in various fields or for a Bachelor of Science in other fields, the Bachelor of Innovation^TM (BI) does not specify the content of a major.  Rather the BI specifies the common elements for a family of degrees, where specialization areas define the details of their major.  The goal of this family is to define the common cores, leaving the disciplines to define the majors.  The BI Program has four significant “components” in each degree, as show in the following diagram. Each of these four components is briefly described below.

Innovation Core

Degree/Major

Each Cross-discipline core is a coherent collection of 21 credits from one “cross over” area the individual will include in the degree program.  The goal is to provide some basic knowledge, appreciation and experience about what people in that area do and to provide sufficient background to effectively interact with people from that area.  This is expected to be a targeted list of courses, not just a total number of credits in an area.  The courses in each cross-discipline cores are detailed on the following pages.

The program may include many choices here, but the initially defined cores are:

          Â  Technology Core (for non-technology degrees) will provide a broad coverage of engineering and technology.  These may be new courses (if resources permit) or may be a collection of existing “introductory” courses in engineering. Â 

          Â  Business Core (for non-business degrees) will provide a broad coverage of business topics, likely to be based on the core business courses of marketing, management, finance and economics. 

          Â  Globalization Core (for any BI major) will provide a selection of courses on international issues.  It will have a language requirement (passing at the second year level) and also international business/policy courses.  It is being considered that students in this option should be required to demonstrate at least 3 months residence in a non-English speaking country, and a one-semester study abroad will be encouraged.  While abroad, involvements in the Innovation team projects will be “virtual”, but will be required.

Creative Communication Core

Innovation draws extensively from material across all four of the above cores. However, in a single undergraduate program we must balance depth and breadth.  The requirement that a student must have a major plus one cross-disciplinary core, ensures that the student has enough depth in two of the key components of innovation and, moreover, that the student could effectively lead a team in one area. Working on the multi-disciplinary team, students will be learning skills that span the full range of the cores and will learn to appreciate the benefits of working together.

General Education Requirements

The total number of credits needed to graduate in the BI program is either 120 or 128 credit hours depending on the emphasis area. The Game Design and Development and the Business Administration majors require 120 hours while the Computer Science, Computer Security, and the Electrical Engineering majors, like the analogous B.S. degrees in these areas, require 128 hours.

Innovation and Cross Discipline Cores:

Program Administration

A program committee will administer this interdisciplinary program with one representative each from the college with a BI degree program, initially College of Business and the College of Engineering and Applied Science.   As the family of degrees is focused on interdisciplinary learning, adding new majors within the family will be determined by policies set by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

Students will have a home department, based on their major. The home department will be responsible for student advising. Credit for the interdisciplinary courses will be shared based on the distribution of majors.

In general, the Bachelor of Innovation degree in some field, say X, will be associated with an existing BA or BS degree and will be administered by the same group that administers the existing degree. Â  From one view, the BI in X, where X is also an existing BS or BA degree, can be viewed as a special track within the existing degrees.  As a result, the BI majors will be counted with the majors in the existing BA or BS degrees. In particular, the majors in the BI in Computer Science, the BI in Game Design and Development, and the BI in Computer Security will be counted with the majors in the BS in Computer Science.  The BI in Electrical Engineering is a track with the BS in Electrical Engineering and so the majors of the BI in Electrical Engineering will be counted with the majors in the BS in Electrical Engineering. The majors in the BI in Business Administration are counted with the majors in the BS in Business Administration.   

Future members of the family that are variations on existing degrees (e.g. a BI in Biology) will be, as would adding a track in an existing program, a campus-level decision.  Future BI degrees that are not just a variation/track of an existing degree will be subject to standard new program process approval.  In either case, the diploma and transcript will read Bachelor of Innovation^TM in major-field-of-study.

Overall Program Student Learning Goals:

The goals of the BI programs can be separated into the overall program goals and the specific major goals. Â  The overall program goals are to produce students with knowledge of and demonstrated experience in multiple phases of the innovation process, strong multi-disciplinary team skills, and demonstrated communication/presentation skills. In addition, they are expected to have the depth of knowledge of their major and a cross-disciplinary core that complements their major and improves their ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams. Specific student learning goals are as follows:

1.       Â  Students will learn the foundational topics in the innovation and cross-disciplinary cores

This student-learning goal focuses on the objective that the students gain the depth of learning in the innovation core and their selected cross-disciplinary core to complement their major-specific learning. Evaluating student learning for this goal will be done at the course level, which will include assessment forms completed by the external organizations/companies that sponsor the innovation teams.

2.       Â  Students will learn the foundational topics in their BI major

This student-learning goal focuses on student learning within the major. Evaluating student learning for this goal will be accomplished using existing assessments for the majors included in the program.  Each major will have education outcomes consistent with the existing accredited programs.  The majors have been designed, where appropriate, to be consistent with AACSB or ABET accreditation guidelines.  The programs cannot be accredited, however, until they graduate their first class. Â  Some majors, such as the Game Design and Development major, have no associated accrediting body.

3.       Â  Students will learn to work effectively in teams

One of the cornerstones of the coursework in this program is the use of teams across the Freshman Innovation courses and the long-term innovation teams spanning sophomore, junior, and senior years as well as in many of the core and major courses. The use of teams also allows students to tackle complex problems because the work can be distributed across the team members, and because there is a broader range of student skills and interests for each team to address the problem. In addition, industry development is usually conducted in teams -- sometimes in teams with hundreds of members, spanning multiple countries -- so developing these skills in our students will also help them in the longer term.

. 

B. Concerns to be addressed

The Need/Demand for Bachelors of Innovation family:

A survey of 50 companies, done in Spring 2005 by Dr. Boult at UCCS, is briefly summarized; full details are available upon request or by visiting www.vast.uccs.edu/~tboult/BI/survey-results.html. (Note the survey includes components not discussed herein as, based on feedback and other considerations, we address the most relevant component for the BI family.)

This summary focuses on the Likert scale “agreement type questions”, where the users answered on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being strongly disagree, 3= neutral and 5= strongly agree. If the mean is statically significantly greater than 3, we accept the hypothesis, if it is significantly less than 3, we reject it; and if it is not significantly distinguishable from neutral we cannot accept or reject the hypothesis.    We apply 1-sided T-tests to the hypothesis and consider p=0.05 or 95% confidence as the criterion to either accept or reject the hypothesis as statistically significant and 99.9% or better as very significant. Â 

The request was sent to email lists from the Greater Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the UCCS Business recruiting list, the Rocky Mountain Technology Alliance (RMTA) members and the Colorado Institute for Technology Transfer and Implementation (CITTI) mailing lists.  The lists are generally Colorado-Springs centric, but at least 15% of those surveyed are from other parts of the Front Range. Â  Fifty (50) different people completed the survey.  They came from a mix of backgrounds and positions and less than 20% of those who reported degree information hold engineering degrees. 

The key questions about need/demand for the Bachelors of Innovation^TM students and students with multi-year multi-disciplinary team experience were accepted at a very significant level (99.9999999%), as was the need for the new programs to be accredited.  According to the survey, the total expected number (per-year) of hires across the proposed BI majors was 60. Â 

The survey asked for input about the current UCCS students compared to those from other schools. The hypothesis about current students/major “I would generally choose a UCCS BS/BA graduate over a BS/BA from other schools such as CU Boulder” was rejected at the 98.8% (p=0.0112) significance level, showing that even in a Colorado-Springs biased sample, current UCCS students are not the preferred choice.   

However, when asked if they would agree with the statement “I would generally choose a UCCS BI graduate over a BS/BA from other schools such as CU Boulder”, the hypothesis was accepted at the very significant 99.95% (p=0.0005) level and when asked to agree with the statement “I would be unlikely to hire a UCCS BI student” the hypothesis was rejected at the very significant 99.998% (p=0.00002) level.   This strongly suggests that the new BI degree students will be more employable than our current UCCS graduates, and that the new degrees will be accepted by industry. Â  Companies will continue to hire traditional students as well, but such students are produced by many schools.  The BI majors will be unique to UCCS and will provide our students a competitive edge, both in the short and long term job market.

The statement “Including the Innovation core is not important, an Engineering with Business minor would be sufficient” was rejected at the very significant 99.9998% level, strongly suggesting that the innovation components are viewed as critical, and will provide marketable differentiation of the proposed programs from other engineering & business programs.

The support/involvement question Â  “I would be interested in being a corporate partner for one of the innovation teams.  My company would likely be willing to fund (hire) an innovation team to address our problems” resulted in a positive response from 12 companies, suggesting there is a base from which to attract enough partners to make the team projects and overall program work.

Why should UCCS offer “Bachelor of Innovation^TM”?

Comparatively, UCCS has strong and balanced undergraduate and graduate programs.  In both the 2006 and 2007 editions of U.S. News and World Report, UCCS ranked in the top tier of all public and private masterÂ’s universities in the West. Masters universities provide a full range of undergraduate and masterÂ’s degree programs.  UCCS has only two Ph.D. programs, one of which is a long-established program in Engineering.

In the 2007 college rankings edition, “AmericaÂ’s Best Colleges,” released Aug. 21, 2006, UCCS ranked seventh among top public Western masters universities.  In the 2006 edition, UCCS ranked eight.

More significant for the Bachelor of Innovation^TM degrees, in the same 2007 edition of “AmericaÂ’s Best Colleges”, the undergraduate engineering program at UCCS earned a ranking of 3.2, ranking the program 16^th among public and private universities and seventh among public universities, including military service academies. Â  Again, this ranking is nationwide among masters universities, not a regional rating. Â  These national rankings show UCCS has sufficient reputation to initiate and sustain a novel initiative such as the BI program. 

In addition, the UCCS campus is very active in the technology transfer area, which is an important part of the innovation process, and has a history of offering courses in that area. With three endowed chairs focused on technology transfer and innovation and an extremely high ratio of invention disclosures, the UCCS faculty is ideally situated to define and lead the innovation teams.  Dr. Boult, the El Pomar Chair in Communications and Computation, has been extremely active with the federally-sponsored Small Business Innovation Research grant program, providing courses and support across the state on these proposals, including involving multi-year, multi-disciplinary undergraduate students in both the proposal preparation process as well as doing the actual work on the contracts with successful companies.  These SBIRS/STTRs, totaling more than $3Million in funding for various companies and the university, also are directly inline with our goals of community engagement.  With this type of record, there will be no difficulty attracting the corporate partners needed for the teams.  The innovation teams are not something we are hoping will work, they are the formalization and extension of the ongoing process Dr. Boult has been using in his own efforts at UCCS.    Companies partnered on existing SBIR/STTRs with UCCS have commented positively about the quality of the teams and their slight surprise to learn that many of students were undergraduates -- based on their behavior and production output they presumed the students were graduate students.

C. Program Quality and Institutional Capacity

1. Admission, Transfer and Graduation Standards

a)      Program admission requirements are the same as the college entrance requirements for the associated colleges. 

b)       Â  This is a unique program with a multi-year required student project.  Transfer student will be permitted to take 201/202 concurrently (serving on two different teams) and to take 301/302 concurrently (serving on two different teams) to allow them to finish with only 2 years at UCCS. Â 

Because of the strong overlap with existing majors in both business and engineering, UCCS students may easily transfer out of these majors, but may face the same issue as external transfer students if they have not been involved in the project courses. The existing articulation agreements for engineering majors apply to the BI in engineering fields. 

c). Enrollments are not expected to be limited, but will depend on resource allocations.  Particular classes in the program will have capped enrollment and, with limited faculty dedicated to the program, the number of sections cannot be expanded in a particular year unless new resources are identified.  Thus substantial growth beyond the current resource base may temporarily limit the programs.

d). Each major defines its own standard for continuing in the program, which are identical to the BS requirements for the related degree.

2. Curriculum Description and Assessment Process

Given the number of BI majors being proposed, and their similarity to existing degrees, this presentation of the curriculum provides a short overview of the courses to be taken. The innovation and cross-discipline cores were described in the previous section.  The following pages provide an overview of the Bachelor of Innovation^TM in Computer Science, Bachelor of Innovation^TM in Computer Science: Security Track, Bachelor of Innovation^TM in Game Design and Development (GDD), Bachelor of Innovation^TM in Electrical Engineering, and the Bachelor of Innovation^TM in Business Administration.

Proposed Bachelors of Innovation^TM majors.

Bachelor of Innovation^TM in Business Administration

Objectives
The Bachelor of Innovation^TM in Business Administration will provide students with both the business background and skills of a classical Bachelor of Science in Business Administration plus the technical and team skills to work on innovative projects including the ability to: (1) recognize the broader issues in engineering technology-related problems or in global innovation problems;  (2) understand the business, legal and societal constraints affecting this technology; and (3) have the ability to communicate the key issues, needs, potential options, and final solution to a challenge. The program seeks to prepare students for successful careers and lifelong learning. In addition to the technical competence to be expected of a graduate with a bachelor degree in business, students will develop the critical thinking skills, multi-faceted team oriented skills and basic innovation background to ensure that they can effectively compete in the changing career landscape in areas driven by innovation.