Higher education has entered a new era: old operating models are failing, but new ones have not yet been built. Financial cliffs, AI disruption, eroding trust and brittle governance structures have produced institutions that excel at symbolic compliance yet struggle to enact real transformation. Strategic plans sit in executive suites, innovation is sequestered at the margins, and faculty remain disconnected from institutional redesign — despite being the core drivers of teaching, learning and scholarly legitimacy.
This webinar calls faculty and instructors to move beyond “innovation theatre” and technological layering toward genuine pedagogical, assessment and governance renewal. The future will not be secured by waiting for leadership to act; it will be shaped by educators who claim agency, experiment courageously and co-design the regenerative university ecosystem now emerging.
Three critical questions this webinar will address:
- If institutional governance cannot redesign itself, how do faculty initiate transformation from within existing structures?
- What concrete changes in teaching, assessment and curriculum design move us from modernization to true innovation?
- How do faculty reclaim professional identity and purpose in an AI-saturated, precarious, platform-driven academic future?
Key takeaways:
- The crisis is structural, not temporary. Funding gaps, declining trust, demographic shifts and AI disruption mean “business as usual with less” is no longer viable. You will be helped to understand why.
- Innovation has been bureaucratically absorbed. Strategic rhetoric masks unchanged business models. Pilots and committees neutralize transformative ideas. Faculty need to own their future.
- Digital layering is not pedagogical transformation. Adding LMS tools or AI detectors preserves outdated assessment rather than rethinking learning design. Examples will be shared of true innovation in teaching and learning, building on the work of Phillipa Hardman.
- Faculty are the missing “middle” of execution. Institutional strategy rarely translates into classroom practice, yet authentic transformation can’t occur without faculty ownership and agency.
- The fourth-generation college and university demands educator agency. Regenerative, challenge-driven, transdisciplinary learning ecosystems require faculty to lead experimentation, not merely comply with inherited systems. Examples from around the world will be shared that suggest what is possible.
