The Center for Academic Innovation (CAI)

Bringing Great Ideas to Life

AUNE has been an extraordinary innovator of academic initiatives throughout its five-decade history, from its path-breaking delivery models to its substantive offerings in education, environmental studies, management, and psychology. The Center for Academic Innovation incubates creative ideas and launches entrepreneurial projects at Antioch University New England. The Center fosters new capacity-building initiatives by providing financial, organizational, and consulting support. Not just a think tank, the Center is a value-added action tank designed to bring great ideas to life.  Through the Center, AUNE faculty, alumni, students and others can design, test, refine, and implement new workshops, conferences, training programs, seminars, certificate programs, institutes, and more.

How the Center Works

What do you need to be successful in advancing your innovation initiative?  Talk with us. The Center for Academic Innovation provides a range of services to facilitate new initiatives. The CAI also accepts proposals for Innovation Grant funding, on a rolling basis.  An advisory body, the Council on Academic Innovation, provides evaluation and assessment of proposed ventures. It reviews proposals and assists the director in selecting the best or most likely to succeed, based on clear and consistent criteria.

CAI Projects

• Northeast Conference on Climate Change Preparedness
• Conservation Psychology Institute (CPI) – CAI supported and launched the CPI, now part of AUNE Continuing Education
• Translating Research to Inform Policy
• AUNE’s Wellness Institute

Council on Academic Innovation – Members

The CAI convenes a Council on Academic Innovation to provide expert advice to the CAI about awarding grants and other aspects of its operations.

• Dr. Barbara Andrews, program director for the Clinical Mental Health Counseling program in the AUNE Department of Applied Psychology.
• David Grant, former president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and now a consultant to schools, foundations, and organizations, and a trustee for three nonprofits.
• Bob Coulter, Director of the Litzsinger Road Ecology Center of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri and an alumnus of AUNE’s Department of Education.
• Eileen Lawrence, co-founder and vice president of sales and marketing for the Alexander Street Press and alumna of AUNE’s Department of Education.