Dear Friends and Colleagues,
It was an honor to be named the Director of Batten’s Center for Social Innovation in May 2021. The Center has had a busy year! Our first success was in hiring and welcoming Brendan Novak as Associate Director of the Center. Brendan is an MPP alum of the Batten School, and he has been central to all of our programs this year. We are lucky to have him on our team!
Our focus this year has been on maintaining our strong student programs while expanding the Center’s research portfolio. Building partnerships has been a primary focus—strong partnerships with businesses, governments, and NGOs help us to create opportunities for students and solidify research relationships. We expect that these partnerships will also privilege us in designing large-scale innovative research projects. We have successfully created two formal partnerships with well-known international NGOs this year, which are already yielding interesting opportunities. In addition, we are expanding outreach at the University—we have several faculty partners in the Engineering School, we are collaborating with the Biocomplexity Institute on two projects, and we work closely with faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences. We also partnered with the Asian Development Bank Institute and the Institute for Fiscal Studies to support a global workshop on improving sanitation in developing countries.
Our student programs over the past year prepared students to understand issues unique to businesses in Appalachia and strategies for sustainable development in the region. Tadler Fellowships provided students with the opportunity to work directly with diverse organizations in Appalachia. Meanwhile, the Invest Appalachia J-term class took place remotely in January 2022 because of concerns related to COVID, but the students were able to talk to leaders from Appalachia and learn about business problems specific to the area. Our Appalachia programs have inspired increased research interest in the region, and we are developing collaborations with several county governments to better understand the payoffs from migration of remote workers into the region.
It has been a very exciting year for the Center as we continue many of the popular programs that have taken place in past years and add on new projects. I have enormous shoes to fill in taking over Directorship of the Center from Christine Mahoney—the Founder and Director of the Center for its first 10 years. I hope you all will join me in thinking about and participating in new and exciting opportunities for the Center.
Best,
Molly Lipscomb