In our 2020 book, Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education, Eddie Maloney and I argued that real educational transformation doesn’t come from technology or strategy alone—it comes from creating the conditions for ongoing, institutional change. Georgetown’s new Academic Innovation Network is one expression of that idea in practice. Below, Eddie reflects on why Georgetown is building AIN now and how it might serve as a shared space for inquiry across higher education.
Q: Why is Georgetown investing in creating the Academic Innovation Network? Why now? What sorts of projects and initiatives will AIN focus on?
A: At Georgetown, the Academic Innovation Network represents both an evolution and a recommitment. It grows out of more than two decades of work in teaching and learning innovation through our Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, the Red House, and now the Emerging Studies Institute. In many ways, the AIN simply brings those ongoing efforts into closer conversation—a way of connecting the threads of pedagogy, curriculum and program design across the university. More than a new initiative, it’s an invitation to think together about what academic innovation might mean right now and how we can keep learning from one another as the landscape around us continues to change.
We’re launching AIN now because higher education is entering a period of profound transformation, driven by artificial intelligence, demographic change and questions of value and access. None of us yet knows what these shifts will mean, but we do know they require institutions to learn faster and collaborate more deeply. The AIN is one way of doing that: a structure that lets us ask better questions, test small ideas and learn from what emerges.
Much of this thinking builds on the ideas Josh and I explored in Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education. There, we argue that meaningful innovation depends less on tools or trends and more on building the institutional conditions for continual learning. The AIN is one way of putting that idea into practice at Georgetown.
The projects in the AIN range from the very local—curricular design, classroom experimentation and AI-enabled learning design—to the institutional and global. We’re working with the Red House to reimagine experiential learning, with CNDLS to expand our AI labs and faculty development initiatives, and with the Emerging Studies Institute to incubate entirely new degree programs that cross boundaries between disciplines and schools. Together, these efforts form an innovation infrastructure that allows Georgetown to explore the future of education while staying grounded in its fundamental functions of formation, inquiry and contributing to the common good.
Q: How is Georgetown’s creation of the AIN relevant to the broader innovation ecosystem across higher education? What are the lessons other schools might learn from the founding of AIN? How might the founding of AIN spur cross-institutional collaboration with academic innovation?
A: If there’s a single idea behind the AIN, it’s that innovation is a shared enterprise. No institution—or individual—has the full picture, and most of us are still finding our way through the same set of challenges. The AIN is Georgetown’s attempt to connect the people and ideas already doing this work across our campuses so that learning in one area—whether it’s teaching innovation, curriculum design or program development—can inform another.
We hope this network can also make it easier to connect with colleagues beyond Georgetown. Many institutions are asking similar questions about how AI might reshape learning, what experiential education means in hybrid environments or how to balance access, cost and quality. The AIN isn’t meant to be a model so much as an open framework, one that invites others to share experiments, exchange evidence and think together about what’s working and what’s not.
If there’s a lesson so far, it may be that academic innovation benefits when we approach it with the same habits we value in scholarship: curiosity, critique and collaboration. Treating change as a form of inquiry—something we study and practice together—helps keep us grounded in what matters most: learning from one another and building a future that reflects our shared educational values.
Q: At a time when many of our universities are under significant pressure from actions of the Trump administration, why is Georgetown prioritizing academic innovation and the launch of AIN? Is this really the right moment when colleges and universities can focus attention on academic innovation?
A: It’s fair to ask whether this is the right moment. Many of us are worried about the immediate challenges facing higher education, including political pressures, economic uncertainty and declining public trust. But I would argue that precisely because of those pressures, universities need to recommit to the long work of learning and adaptation. Academic innovation, at its best, is not a diversion from that work but a way of doing it more intentionally.
Our approach is to begin with humility: to assume that none of us yet knows what the right models will look like, but that we can learn a great deal by building them together. The AIN gives us a mechanism to ask questions such as how do we preserve human connection in an AI-mediated world, how do we maintain rigor when AI is challenging the very foundations of teaching and learning, how do we align experimentation with mission and values, how do we see uncertainty as an opportunity to strengthen the human and intellectual purposes of higher education. These are questions that extend well beyond Georgetown, and we hope others will join us in asking and answering these and many other questions about the future of higher education.
