Reimagining Higher Education: From Individual Performance to Creative Community

“The best way to know another is to understand your experience” ( Stephen L. H. Murphy-Shigematsu, Psychology of Education, Stanford University)

photo by Lauren Carnahan, Wond'ry Innovation Center, Vanderbilt University, March 2024

Course

By looking at creative collaborative response mechanisms, we foster Resilience in academic contexts, that is 'to hold paradoxes and contradictions within ourselves as well as within our institutions' (Reimagining Higher Education conference, 2024).
In the face of "Rapture" (Scharmer, 2026) and fast mass of information, higher education institutions are turning to address: • A growing disconnection between individual and collective creativity, objectives. • Limited ability to respond to disruptions due to rigid structures and silos thinking • Rising mental health concerns among students and staff due to lack of community creative processes bridged to the academic purpose.
These issues are reflected in recent findings:
• A 2023 World Economic Forum survey revealed that 72% of educators see a lack of collaboration as a major obstacle to innovation. • According to the OECD Education at a Glance 2022 report, fewer than half of higher education institutions have mechanisms to adapt effectively to disruptions in creative approaches that are integrated to their academic goals.
"Reimagining Universities as a turning point, we can actually change the laws of our behavior once we put our minds to it by bending the curve of observation inward (Otto Scharmer, MIT). This program introduces an Action Learning framework designed to integrate innovative practices into academic settings by transforming tensions into opportunities for growth. It emphasizes shifting mindsets, embracing diversity and fostering collaboration to unlock collective potential.

What we practice ?

  1. Sensing Opportunities: Transitioning from a focus on strong individualities and hierarchical information approaches to fostering strong, agile and diverse communities that thrive through creatve collaboration.
  2. Integrating Data: Utilizing multi-sensory approaches to enable social decision- making, foster deeper connections, and build social capital as a resource for innovation and creativity as part of academic programs’ goals not a “nice extra”
  3. Building (creative) Confidence: Empowering individuals to harness their intengible ways of learning while co-creating solutions and driving progress through collective intelligence (WeQ).

 

 

What can you experience at the end of the program?

 

Being in conversation with individual and collective systems of thinking and values, we cultivate the ergonomics (physical, cognitive, and communicative) of creativity by seeing and sensing into current reality, suspending our habitual problem-solving through abstraction, and practicing emerging listening.

By cultivating attention to context, we discover new directions that are not accessible through thinking alone, while allowing alliances and relationships to support these emerging pathways.

Through action-based learning, the practice of micro-movements, and cultivating awareness of the impact of those micro-movements (Karen O’Brien, University of Oslo), participants develop a deeper capacity for meaningful change.

Increase your awareness of your own complex social structures and, most importantly, gain tools to act both personally and collectively from an agile mindset, embracing the “inseparability between inner knowing and outer change.”

Explore creativity as a means of cultivating spaces for learning relationships and 21st-century learning environments.

By learning to tolerate stepping into the unknown, you develop a source of well-being and attentive relaxation that is essential for response-ability and effective decision-making.

“Creativity must be present at every level of every artistic and technical part of an organisation.” (Dr Hill, Harvard University)

Program & Curriculum

Module 1

Practicing multiple perspectives –  Higher Education as ecosystem for collective creativity 4d mapping 

Module 2

From a mindful to heartful HigherED 3.0 

Module 3

Academic Stewardship (from prototyping to crystalisation)

Module 4

Diversity and muliculturality – circles of belonging, artful communicators

Module 5

Social Decision Making-ability to act

Trainer

Andreea Gatman is a Coach & Facilitator with over +12 years of experience in sustainable education, +20 years in international partnerships, and action‑inquiry–based prototyping. She holds a BA in Political Science, a Master in European Studies from the University of Graz, and an MBA in Public Governance from Modul University Vienna. She is Certified ACSTH ICF in Individual & Team Coaching, a Certified Trainer, and a long‑time practitioner of U‑lab (2020) and Awareness Leadership & Social Presencing Theater (2021) from MIT.Since 2016, Andreea has been designing and delivering teachers’ training programs in Finland, developing cross‑cultural prototypes, and supporting educational innovation across Europe, India, and the US. Her work integrates SDG‑aligned competencies, digital ethics in education, social impact assessment, and relational systems mapping. In 2024 Humphrey Fellow in Thriving Communities, Education Leadership, Policy and Organisation, at Vanderbilt University.

Reimagining Higher Education: From Individual Performance to Creative Community

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