JD Rottweiler, Ph.D.
It’s interesting how things change over time, some of it planned, some of it not.
“Finding the Cochise College ‘way,’” read the headline on my very first column as Cochise College president, dated August 2009. That piece highlighted some things I hoped we would do, focused on what a valuable resource Cochise College already was, and addressed something that is on my mind again as a new chapter in Cochise College history begins.
With this week’s opening of the Downtown Center, the college is poised and eager to chart unfamiliar waters. It is “moving forward.”
The opening of the center has energized board members, faculty and staff, and the community. It should, because we have ideas and plans that previously could not be explored because of space. That has all changed and we can hardly wait to get started.
Walt Disney once said, “Around here, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things because we’re curious…and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
Likewise, a college is no place to keep curiosity or new ideas at bay. My remarks at faculty-staff convocation encouraged creativity and innovation. For me, creativity and innovation are different. Creativity is the process of generating something new. It is a prerequisite of innovation. Innovation, on the other hand, is the practical application of that creativity. It is the act of introducing something new or improving an existing idea or process. Innovation disrupts the status quo and moves us forward.
The ability for Cochise College to be innovative on a sustainable basis requires us to look within and to renew ourselves continually. We have to be willing to clear enough of what’s on our minds to create an open space for new ideas, and to recognize new possibilities when they appear. Then we have to be willing to act on those new ideas or possibilities. Innovation is proof of creativity. Like any organization trying to be innovative, we have to be willing to change and we have to be willing to let go of things that are not working, outdated, or have run their course. This is often the most difficult part of innovating; letting go and change.
At Cochise College we are working hard to be innovative. Our objective is to offer employees opportunities to think outside the box, to defy boundaries – be they departmental, vocational, organizational, political, or otherwise – in order to best serve today’s students.
I did not in August 2009 foresee exactly where we are today. The column headline about “finding our way,” however, is timeless. If it is to remain relevant, the college should always be finding and redefining its way. It should always be moving forward.
J.D. Rottweiler is president of Cochise College. Contact him at jdr@cochise.edu.