Inside the Baylor Social Innovation Collaborative

By a confluence of a few factors—not the least of which were Baylor students, ever committed to doing good—the Baylor Social Innovation Collaborative (BAY-SIC) was formed in late 2016 as a means of addressing some of the most complex social problems of our time.

“Prior to his joining us here at Baylor, Provost [Gregory L.] Jones had been leading an effort to encourage Christians to rediscover the ways we are called toward social innovation, a call that resonates with many of us at Baylor,” said Andy Hogue, director of the Philanthropy & Public Service Program and senior lecturer at the Honors College.“

Last summer, Provost Jones convened a few faculty, staff and deans to begin exploring how we might cultivate collaborative efforts around social innovation, and we worked through the fall to develop ideas and vision. Because our most important problems are exceptionally complex, they are not reducible to any one discipline or field. The group felt committed to creating collaborative projects that might help us move past mere content knowledge and into the development of new paradigms and skills that help us peer over or even dismantle the barriers we’ve erected between academic fields and begin to develop generative ideas and solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.”

Once that initial groundwork for the collaborative was laid, an “all call” was put out in January 2017. Faculty and staff brought forward ideas that could quickly function as prototypes, the most successful of which would receive seed funding. In order to be seeded, proposals had to meet a number of requirements. In addition to addressing complex problems and presenting an opportunity to develop scalable and transformational approaches, proposals had to be: cross-disciplinary; community-embedded, involving partnerships across sectors; animated by faith; have an educational mission; and be well-crafted and planned.

“Oh, and we only gave people three weeks to submit a first batch of ideas,” said Hogue, who has been involved in shepherding BAY-SIC since Summer 2017. “But, to say that we were overwhelmed by the response would be an understatement. In three weeks, more than 30 distinct proposals came onto our radar. They spanned a very wide array, and certainly, some were more ready than others to enter the pipeline. There were days when I couldn’t even read all of the emails that came my way, much less respond to them.”

BAY-SIC seeded about 10 different projects from among these initial submissions. Here are a few highlights:

• Creating and developing Health & Virtual Reality interventions to promote better health outcomes in Indian slums
• Developing new models that involve faith communities to promote flourishing among persons with disabilities and their caregivers
• Studying the dimensions of and developing new models of intervention for the growing problem of food insecurity among college students in the United States
• Developing collaborative models to eradicate domestic human trafficking
• Developing, in collaboration with colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine, new health and economic infrastructure in The Gambia
• Exploring and developing new models for intervention related to the causes, characteristics and consequences of the migration of children from Mexico and the Northern Triangle of Central America
• Developing new Health interventions for women in Waco who are obese entering pregnancy, helping to promote positive health outcomes for the women and their children
• Addressing impoverishment and isolation by working with vulnerable older persons in Waco and the surrounding area using interdisciplinary knowledge, research and practice through engaging with local agencies and community partners
• Exploring local water issues as a model for better understanding global water issues Several more projects are in development and many more exist in even more nascent stages, focused on issues such as incarceration and justice-system reform, the flourishing of children in Central America and human trafficking.

A New Kind of Teaching and Learning

Embedded in many of these BAY-SIC- seeded projects is an effort to design new models for collaborative teaching and learning across Baylor’s 12 academic units. Thus, five new “social innovation labs” will launch in the fall—courses that promote a fresh approach to learning by assembling diverse groups of faculty, staff and students to work together with local and global partners on complex social problems and comprehensive solutions.

“We hope this is just the start,” Hogue said. “We hope to engage our alumni and other constituents in these efforts, believing that there is much good work to do, and we’re best if we do it together. This can be the best of what Baylor offers to the world.”