What if you could build a university from scratch with few limitations? What would you jettison, what would you retain, and how would it work? Would tenure, research, shared governance, and the typical place-bound semester schedule exist? This session explores innovative academic architecture at three challenger brand institutions intending to purposefully disrupt the status quo in higher education. Offering leading-edge educational innovations such as disaggregation of degree programs, three-year undergraduate degrees, course-embedded experiential learning, seminar-style classes, purposeful inclusion of genAI, required pedagogical training for faculty, and adaptive learning technologies for Generation Z and working adults, challenger brands embrace a “start-up” mentality to redefine academic operations, push independent institutions toward new horizons, and remove the commonly found barriers in academic affairs.
Brad Fuster, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, San Francisco Bay University (CA)
Chair: Ellen Goldey, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, Centre College (KY)