LET’S CREATE ENTREPRENEURIAL DREAMS

It’s January. And as a person employed by a higher education institution, you should be making resolutions about academic activities. But never, ever, never call what you make a resolution. Resolutions are things we hope we’ll do. No guarantees. Too often just made and forgotten.

What you should actually be forming are declarations I call entrepreneurial dreams.

Yes, I can already see your eyes rolling.

OMG, you’re saying. The expression is way too “out there,” too emotional, too touchy feely, one of those expressions created by people who sit in bean bag chairs in their offices and still wish they could follow the Grateful Dead.

But you should still use the expression. Every last one of you should use it. And you should use it publicly and loudly.

Because higher education needs more doses of entrepreneurship.

• The organizing, managing, and assuming the risks of an enterprise characterize the word entrepreneurial.
• Dreams are ideas or visions often created in the imagination that one wants very much to do.

So entrepreneurial dreams are sorta/kinda ideas and visions you can champion, and can do your absolute best to take the risks and make happen.

All of us except the most cockeyed optimist believe that higher education needs some help. Certainly everything is not broken, but some things definitely need work. And simply saying parts of the system are broken does not begin to fix them. It takes one voice and another and another and then a lot of effort.

Barack Obama said: "One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.”

John Dewey said: “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”

Entrepreneurial dreams are things you can get passionate and emotional about, and things that are all about change.

Here are four dreams for the winter and spring to start you out.  (I will only give you a couple sentences on each idea. You can adapt, organize, manage and assume the risk yourself.)

1. Plan an amazing orientation for new students next Fall. Not one based only on social activities and games. But one based on the meaning of a college education, the academic expectations, and even service learning.
2. Change up the ways you teach or administrate. Do what you do differently and in ways you dream to be both better and a little out of your comfort zone. It’s often called re-imagining yourself and your job and it involves lots of risk and plenty of reward.
3. Don’t ever make your classes an extension of high school. Figure out ways to talk about this departmentally and even college-wide. Make certain every student understands the prestige of a college education and the need to have a different mind-set and work ethic.
4. Be action-oriented. Higher education can only be helped by action. If you’re a new prof, suggest changes and enlist support. If you’re burning out, fix the reasons why and help others with similar situations. If you’re near retirement, suggest changes and enlist support just like new profs.

Be an entrepreneur of dreams.

Make the time to do it. It will be worth it. Higher education depends on it.