The Creativity Center

In early 2010, prompted by an invitation from then-acting president, Marlene Gerber Fried, I joined a brainstorming team that developed the framework for a new campus program, The Creativity Center. Throughout 2010-11 I was part of a core group of seven faculty, staff and students that solidified the core messaging, vision and launching initiatives for our first year. With a seed grant of $600,000, The Creativity Center was officially launched in the spring of 2012. The Creativity Center was realized as a new initiative-based program and resource that fosters a campus culture devoted to progressive teaching, learning, projects and programming. Over the last 40 years, Hampshire has established itself as a leader in experimental teaching and experiential learning methodologies, but as we’ve evolved so have the institutional structures necessary for growth and stability. A larger school, fiscal responsibility, and complicated processes can sometimes serve as a challenge for trend-setting students, experimental professors, and innovative staff. The Creativity Center empowers Hampshire community members to transcend those challenges by incentivizing new approaches to the classroom, sponsoring ground-breaking student work, and celebrating the process of creativity across the college. Our mantra—“Create. Connect. Change.”––is activated through our initiatives and practices. The Creativity Center bridges the gaps between academic life and social life; between work and play; between knowledge and imagination. My role in the Creativity Center has a campus-wide reach. The creative sparks developed by this program gained the interest of the Roddenberry Foundation. Our programming and mission was directly in line with theirs as we worked to attain an additional $100,000 grant to support our core programming and additional campus grants.

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