This class challenged me to think about innovation, specifically social innovation, in very new ways. My initial definition of social innovation coming into the class was having ‘new people solve old problems’. Adding in new perspectives from a modern context, or from people who have been historically marginalised from the solution-finding process, would yield new and better results for social problems that at their core haven’t changed for decades. I still think this definition works to some extent, what has changed is how I would go about doing social innovation in the future. The idea of not boiling the ocean, of finding the biggest smallest thing you can do is a powerful one. It’s often too easy to get paralysed by the scope of the challenge you’re trying to solve and end up doing nothing as a defence mechanism. This class has changed my perspective on how much impact is enough; just because you aren’t solving the problem doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t worthwhile.

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 I’ve also gained a new appreciation for the importance of diversity on teams, not just in demographics but also diversity of discipline, experience, and thought. I’ve long believed that diverse teams create better outcomes, but this was the first class where I was able to see it so up close and personal. Working with the students from UQAM was a great learning experience and our project looking at the teacher shortage was significantly stronger because of their input. There were challenges that arose from working interculturally, especially with the–admittedly mild–language barrier, but learning to handle them was another important part of the learning process for this class. I especially appreciated learning how to translate my priorities and goals for this class and project into a shared set of values that we could align with as a team. Since the UQAM class was being assessed by a different professor with different goals for the class, we had different understandings of what the ideal output for our team was. Given that we had to find a way to work together, it was an interesting process to learn how to rescind the level of control I would normally exert on a group project. Having built trust in my teammates during our trip to Montreal, this was less challenging than I expected it to be, and I am proud of the work that we were able to complete as a team. This class also encouraged me to take a more granular view of culture. It would be easy to chalk up many of the communication difficulties we had to our team being from different countries, but it was far more common for the differences we were experiencing to be due to the cultural differences between our universities or even majors. There is a world of difference between a good business student and a good engineering student, even though they have the commonality of both being good students. When assessed on paper purely by GPA or test scores, there is little to distinguish them, but as an engineer working closely with business students for the first time, there was a stark difference in how we thought about and approached problems. While I do a lot of interdisciplinary work through NIS, this was the first time I was on a project that wasn’t itself inherently interdisciplinary. The approach that the UQAM students took to the class felt like that for a traditional business class, and I felt that I was required to adapt my own approach more than they were. An interesting exercise to try.

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Moving to the project itself, I was surprised that we didn’t end up solving the problem we had initially identified for ourselves. We wanted to find ways to alleviate the teaching shortage, but instead found more opportunity in helping teachers transition out of the profession to help them avoid burnout. While I believe this is certainly an important service, it does not quite fit into my initial understanding of social innovation. Working within the structure of the class and accommodating half our team being remote for the majority of the project, we spent less time on identifying our solutions than I would have thought. It was another interesting learning experience to have to sell an idea that I felt did not quite align with the spirit of the class, but was valuable nonetheless. If anything, this forced me to work harder to find the best way to pitch the idea rather than trusting that the audience would see the inherent value in it with little input from our team. I wonder what Max and I would have come up with if we weren’t working with the UQAM students or if the class was structured more like some of the ideas thrown around during our last day of class brainstorming session.

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Overall, this was one of the most enjoyable classes I’ve taken at UC, certainly one of the best Honors seminars I’ve done. I don’t think other study tours have the same social component to them that we got by meeting and bonding with UQAM students in Montreal and then showing them around Cincinnati. That was a truly special opportunity that I very much enjoyed. I learned a lot about social innovation, my approach to group work, and how I can take this principles forward into other educational and career opportunities. Thank you Aaron and Neil!