Areas of Expertise
Research
The Center undertakes multi-method, collaborative research projects with innovative institutions and individuals pursuing full participation and institutional citizenship goals, within and across specific institutional settings. Our research methodology includes qualitative and participatory action research, surveys, network and stakeholder mapping, and collaborative inquiry.
Strategic Visioning and Mapping
The Center facilitates strategic visioning and mapping work with groups, institutions and networks involved in advancing full participation and that seek to broaden their impact and build their capacity to participate in institutional and systems change. Strategic visioning provides a collaborative, multi-level systems framework for designing and assessing programs and initiatives, and produces collective vision, narratives, language, strategies, and metrics designed to enable lasting impact. The mapping process identifies strategic opportunities for institutional change by identifying the “action arenas” where the interest, need, collaborative leadership, and leverage points converge.
Capacity Building
The Center uses the knowledge generated through its research and reflective inquiry with partners to build the capacity of programs, organizations and networks to advance full participation and with the goal of having maximum and lasting impact. The Center facilitates development of organizational capacity in systems thinking, transformative leadership development, multi-level assessment and evaluation, reflective inquiry, network development, and community building.
Education & Knowledge Sharing
The Center Director has created a transdisciplinary seminar called Diversity and Innovation, which offers an innovative curriculum aimed at building the capacity of lawyers to exercise transformative leadership. This seminar is a year-long trans-disciplinary seminar and research practicum, which develops innovative frameworks and strategies for addressing structural inequality and advancing new models of citizenship within social institutions. The seminar explores the emerging role of lawyers, transformative leaders and other change agents in addressing structural inequality through institutional transformation. It offers an integrated and systemic approach to addressing structural inequality and advancing full participation in higher education. You can learn more about the seminar by visiting our portal. The Center is also developing a podcast series featuring innovative practitioners discussing their work and career development. This series examines legal training and experience as tools for innovation and the development of effective professional niches for legally trained innovators.
Network Development
The Center uses network development as a key strategy for advancing a theory of change, and as an indicator of full participation. These networks involve collaborations between multi-faceted transformative leaders to identify and address shared visions, challenges and commitments and to produce concrete impact in institutions and communities while generating significant learning and research that can be applied broadly. The Center is currently working with a variety of networks, including the Reentry Education Network, Imagining America, LADO (Liberal Arts Diversity Officers), and the American Commonwealth Project.
Systems Assessment
The Center develops indicators of changes in the practices, institutions and networks that signal shifts in the structure, system, culture or constitution of a setting. The focus of this inquiry is on understanding the indicators of and related strategies accounting for the development of settings that enable full participation.