The Bachelor of Innovation (BI), a fully accredited alternative to a BA or BS, has 23 majors that allow students to follow innovation-oriented pathways across colleges, including chemistry, marketing and womens and ethnic studies.
The program was created by Terrance Boult, the El Pomar endowed professor of innovation and security, and approved by UCCS regents in 2004, with the first degree becoming available in the Fall 2007 semester. The program is now headed by Innovation Director Benjamin Kwitek and Associate Director of Innovation Corrine Harmon.
A BI is designed to give students skills to communicate across specialties and skills that some companies are interested in.
“I wanted engineers and businesspeople who could work together, both of whom could work with clients, and the only people we could find with those kinds of skills were 10 or 15 years out from college, because they developed them after,” Boult said.
A BI works similarly to a BA or BS major, only replacing some core curriculum courses with “innovation core” courses that teach workplace skills, according to Boult.
“You take all the normal classes that your major defines; it’s just changing the gen ed,” Boult said.
These classes include INOV 1000: Introduction to Entrepreneurship, INOV 1010: The Innovation Process, IOV 2100: Technical Writing, Proposals, and Presentations; INOV 3010: Business Law and Innovation as well as a capstone.
There are also team-based classes oriented around training for analysis, research and leadership.
“Almost all of the BI courses count towards your compass curriculum and general education credits. Writing intensive classes, inclusiveness, diversity and sustainability classes are in the innovation core, so you can fit them in normally,” Boult said.
The program also includes completing 15 credit hours of a cross-discipline core designed to provide students with basic knowledge, skills and communication competence in an area outside their major. Cross-disciplines include, but are not limited to, business, creative communication, engineering and globalization.
“Part of what we want is for people to get a feeling for a different culture. The engineering school has one kind of culture, the business school has its own culture,” said Boult.
The Innovation Program Team, a group of interdisciplinary faculty members across UCCS colleges and fields, teaches the Bachelors of Innovation core courses.
The BI can be new to companies since it’s only offered at UCCS, but it’s accepted by most seeking bachelor’s holders because it’s accredited.
“Most companies will say you need a bachelor’s in something. There will be some companies that might not understand what a BI is, and that’s part of why you can just say, ‘Well, I have a bachelor’s in computer science’ or music or whatever,” Boult said.
BI is accepted by graduate schools, and some past Innovation students now have PhDs.
Existing academic departments at UCCS can create a BI degree and have it approved by administration. Students can learn more about the degree, including a list of all available majors, here.
The Osborne Center houses many of the classes in the BI. Photo by Josiah Dolan. Graphic by the BI Facebook.