Empowering Changemakers: United College readies to launch new minor in Social Innovation and Impact
by Rebecca Wagner, Director of External Relations
Receiving formal academic recognition for building a social venture? A game changer.
“I think we're going to see a lot more social ventures come out of Waterloo,” explains Miraal Kabir, an upper-year University of Waterloo Faculty of Math student, GreenHouse alum, and co-founder of Safi. Miraal is referencing the GreenHouse-inspired minor in Social Innovation and Impact that was recently approved by the University of Waterloo senate with a fall 2024 start date.
Giving formal academic credit and recognition to the building of social ventures could be game-changing for students and could shape the social innovation landscape, paving the way for many more ideas, initiatives, and ventures, that are driven by skilled and talented changemakers, that profoundly touch people’s lives.
Building the GreenHouse Legacy of Social Impact
“My four months with GreenHouse completely changed my perspective. Imagine the impact this could have over four or five years. That would be huge,” shares Ridham Chadha, an upper-year University of Waterloo Faculty of Environment student, GreenHouse alum, and founder of Reaplenish.
The minor in Social Innovation and Impact extends the GreenHouse and United College legacy of local and global social impact. Launching on the heels of the GreenHouse 10th anniversary milestone, the new minor is firmly rooted in GreenHouse’s rich tradition of social justice and sustainable impact.
Having experienced substantial growth in its first 10 years with over 115 ventures and thousands of students supported through its programming, network of community members and funding, formal academic recognition was the next logical step in the growth and progression of the GreenHouse social incubator.
Through eight courses, the minor in Social Innovation and Impact will formalize the learnings that former and current GreenHouse students have pursued over the last decade on their social innovation journeys. What was once provided in an informal, extra-curricular framework, will now be taught in a formal, academic model through classes such as “Research for Social Impact,” “Designing for Social Impact,” and “Measuring and Evaluating Social Innovation for Impact.” This new framework will offer students the ability to research, define, design, launch and test social innovations for academic credit.
Much like GreenHouse itself, the minor will make a significant contribution to the innovation ecosystem at the University of Waterloo.
It leverages the best of what the University of Waterloo has to offer as a world-class entrepreneurial ecosystem and contributes to the development of a key strategic pillar of the University’s vision for the next 100 years; lead globally, act locally. Through the new minor, GreenHouse and United College are continuing to make distinct contributions to the broader University mandate, including to the University’s recently launched Global Futures initiative, which focuses on evolving to answer the world’s most pressing challenges.
“United College has always been keen to find new ways to contribute to the advancement of the University of Waterloo’s priorities. Given the University’s emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, it just makes sense to leverage the expertise at GreenHouse in social innovation to build an academic program in that field,” explains Rick Myers, principal, United College.
Tackling the World’s most Urgent Issues Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration and Problem-Solving
John Abraham, Academic Dean of United College, envisions the minor getting students as comfortable as possible very early on in their academic careers with interdisciplinary collaboration and problem-solving. This requires a reinvention of the traditional approach to training students, with an enhanced focus on problem-finding and a new way of learning to rise to meet today’s increasingly complex environment.
Future challenges will be at the interface of social, economic, and environmental dimensions. To tackle these increasingly complex challenges, we need to graduate students who are skilled at cross-disciplinary problem-solving, who are adept at giving thoughtful consideration to solutions by incorporating insights from numerous sources. And we need to train students how to learn in an era of remote learning and artificial intelligence. The new minor will bring students together from diverse faculties, perspectives, and backgrounds to learn together in new ways and gain deeper insights into problems through rich collaboration.
Tania Del Matto, Director of GreenHouse, emphasizes the interdisciplinary value of the new minor. “This approach promotes the applied integration of various academic disciplines, drawing knowledge from business, the humanities, and the STEM fields, to understand the multifaceted nature of social problems and their solutions.”
The Social Innovation and Impact minor was warmly received by the Faculty of Arts, as they highlight the importance of inter-disciplinary innovation and entrepreneurship to address the world’s most urgent challenges in their recently launched 10-year strategic plan.
A Game Changer: Making Building a Business More Accessible
By intertwining academic study and venture creation, something that was once outside of the realm of possibility for many students given the realities and demands of student life, will become more feasible and open social innovation up to a broader audience, as academic credit will be awarded for following the many stages of nurturing an idea and growing a venture.
Miraal shares the potential impact of the new minor: “Even if I could get a bit of course credit for the work I'm doing with Safi and take a little bit off my academic load, I think it would be a huge game changer.”
Ridham elaborates. “Students prioritize studying over everything else, particularly international students (who pay substantial tuition fees).” If ventures were part of a student’s course load, Ridham explains, there would be no extra pressure. “This is important from a mental health point of view.”
Paige Petcoff, an upper-year University of Waterloo Faculty of Health student, GreenHouse student, and co-founder of Health Link, envisions the new minor introducing students very early on in their academic careers to the structures that make social innovation possible. “A lot of students are very anxious to apply their skills in a meaningful way. The new minor would provide an awareness and allow students to really get in there and channel their passions, giving them a whole four years to develop and grow their ideas.”
Experiential Learning and an Innovative Mindset
It’s one thing to learn concepts in a classroom. It’s quite another to apply these learnings in a real-world setting. “An idea is just an idea unless you act on it,” Ridham shares.
The minor in Social Innovation and Impact fully embraces experiential learning, deep diving into the rich tradition that the University of Waterloo is so well-known for. In allowing for the practical application of academics, students can learn in ways that are not typically available solely through the classroom.
Applying classroom concepts to a student’s own venture is critical to further ingrain learning. Miraal shares that “the application of knowledge and case studies are a crucial part of the new minor. Having real-life application is invaluable.” Wallis Zeng, an upper-year University of Waterloo Faculty of Arts and GreenHouse student and co-founder of Q-Connect, agrees. “The more you do, the more you learn.”
Wallis emphasizes the value that can come from developing entrepreneurial skills such as innovation, decision-making, leadership, and teamwork, all skills that the new minor will nurture. Wallis explains that she got her co-op positions because of her soft skills and envisions that the new minor will help new students build these important skills. “Innovation is a very hard skill to develop.”
Paige views social innovation and impact as future oriented. “Job applications ask applicants to have this innovative forward thinking growth mindset. Are you able to take on a new perspective and develop ideas that other people wouldn’t have thought of before?”
The minor will offer students the opportunity to develop these skills beyond the traditional classroom setting and will provide the foundation and structure very early on where innovators are able to see their ideas take flight.
Raising the Profile of the Social Venture
Profound meaning can be found in touching people’s lives, in meeting a daily need that alters the trajectory of someone’s life, with ripple effects that extend far beyond any one community.
GreenHouse supported social ventures range from empowering farmers in East Africa to pasteurize milk, to ensuring the accuracy of survey research data, to using biomarkers to predict and prevent dysregulation in children with autism, to designing tailor-made pantsuits for women using sustainable materials.
“Social ventures offer important, tangible changes that can improve people’s lives and address societal issues,” explains Wallis. This is echoed by Miraal. “I cannot tell you the type of emotions it brings out when you see a mother crying because she likes your product. These are emotions that you can only have by making this type of impact on others.”
Tania elaborates. “Engaging with social issues and working on their solutions helps in developing empathy, it demonstrates a commitment to social responsibility and innovation and a deeper understanding of societal dynamics.”
Ten years of GreenHouse have underscored the significance of the social venture, that they are something to be celebrated, nurtured, and encouraged. That having a real, concrete, impact on people’s lives extends beyond the bottom line. In granting formal, academic recognition to the creation of social ventures, the minor in Social Innovation and Impact recognizes and celebrates this potential, paving the way for countless more ventures with untold impact.
Looking Ahead
With an initial intake of 20 students, and plans to grow to 50 students, the minor in Social Innovation and Impact aims to create maximum social impact.
Incoming students will be fully embraced by a community of support and will follow in the footsteps of GreenHouse alumni while forging new paths of their own. “I'll definitely be following along from wherever I end up being. I'm just really excited for all the new students,” shares Paige.
This will be an environment where anyone who wants to do good in the world can thrive, where the conditions are created that make lasting impact possible. As students prepare to further their unique social impact journeys with the minor’s launch in the fall, they do so united by a shared desire to make the world a better place.
Wallis shares her definition of social innovation. “The impact that social innovation generates is much like the planting of trees. If we nurture it today it grows into a tree that provides shade for tomorrow. Ideas might start small, but they hold the potential to grow and provide benefits over time.”
Building a foundation for the creation of ideas, initiatives, and ventures that profoundly touch people’s lives is truly a game changer.
A revised version of this article was originally published in the University of Waterloo’s “Waterloo News” on February 21st, 2024 (here).
