The goal of the Mellon Academic Innovation Grant at Rhodes College (2014-2017) was to institutionalize support for strategic innovation at Rhodes by creating a learning community that included current faculty, newly-trained academics, information services staff, and our students.

We built new networks of faculty, staff, and students, grounding our work in community of practice theory and models (Lave & Wenger, 1991, 1998). We focused our work together on the intersection of innovative pedagogies, integrative learning, engaged scholarship, and digital technologies.

The questions that we are posing together are generative for our campus community. We see connecting themes across individual projects that support student learning. We see increasing alignment in new ways of thinking about the integration of faculty work across traditional categories of teaching, research, and service. We are building and sustaining external partnerships, and more effectively utilizing technologies to support our work as teachers and scholars.