The Center for Academic Innovation

Bringing Great Ideas to Life

AUNE has been an extraordinary innovator of academic initiatives throughout its five-decade history, from its path-breaking delivery models to its substantive offerings in education, environmental studies, management, and psychology.  The Center for Academic Innovation is a new initiative to incubate creative ideas and launch entrepreneurial projects at Antioch University New England.  The Center is fostering new teaching and learning initiatives by providing financial, organizational and consulting support.  Not just a “think tank,” the Center is a value-added action tank designed to bring great ideas to life.  Through the Center, AUNE faculty, alumni, students and others can design, test, refine, and implement new workshops, conferences, training programs, seminars, certificate programs, institutes, and more.

How the Center Works

What do you need to be successful in advancing your innovation initiative?  Talk with us.  The Center for Academic Innovation provides a range of services to facilitate new initiatives.  The CAI also accepts proposals for Innovation Grant funding, on a rolling basis.  An advisory body, the Council on Academic Innovation, provides evaluation and assessment of proposed ventures. It reviews proposals and assists the director in selecting the best or most likely to succeed, based on clear and consistent criteria.

CAI Projects include

“We operate from an understanding that innovation makes the competition irrelevant,” says the Center’s founding director, Abigail Abrash Walton. “The Center’s focus is on facilitating AUNE’s next waves of innovation to advance our purpose of providing transformative education through scholarship, innovation and community action for a just and sustainable society.”

Council on Academic Innovation

The CAI convenes a Council on Academic Innovation to provide expert advice to the CAI about awarding grants and other aspects of its operations. The members are:

• Dr. Barbara Andrews, program director for the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program in the AUNE Department of Applied Psychology.
• David Grant, former president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and now a consultant to schools, foundations, and organizations, and a trustee for three nonprofits.
• Jon Greenberg, a member of the AUNE board of trustees and a journalist, formerly executive editor at New Hampshire Public Radio.
• Eileen Lawrence, cofounder and vice president of sales and marketing for the Alexander Street Press and alumna of AUNE’s Department of Education.
•Gregg Tewksbury, president and CEO of Savings Bank of Walpole.

We are interested in your ideas. For more information call 603-283-2344 or email Abigail Abrash Walton.

“You can think of this Center as being a lot like a venture capital operation. Its work focuses on giving smart, evidence-driven ideas the support they need—monetarily, conceptually, and administratively—to get off the ground.” — David A. Caruso, AUNE president