As I write this, the higher education sector and the world stand at a historic moment. We are facing a future of exponential change with technological advances, damaging climate disasters, significant demographic shifts, polarization, and inequalities. The future promises that these challenging, interconnected issues will continue to increase in complexity and with greater speed. These changes and our inability to manage them make it apparent that the higher education sector also needs to change to continue to meet the needs of society.

We are at a moment of possibility. We are at a moment where we have the freedom and the mandate to reimagine the role(s) that higher education can play in helping us meet the urgencies of the day and productively address this polycrisis. Higher education as a sector is uniquely positioned to help us all develop the capabilities that we need to solve the world’s most pressing, interconnected challenges. Colleges and universities can graduate changemakers. Colleges and universities can also serve as the lever to activate communities of changemakers – to create the environments within which individuals across a community can discover their own power as changemakers.

This edition, titled New Horizons of Social Innovation in Changemaker Education and Research, provides glimpses of the future as it highlights innovative ways in which higher education is graduating changemakers as well as activating ecosystems of changemakers. It was developed from research shared at the 2024 Changemaker Education Research Forum (CERF). The articles in this special issue were curated by Ashoka Fellow and scholar Dr. Adam Jagiello-Rusiłowski and represent diverse perspectives on the role of higher education in society.

Definitions: What is a “Changemaker Ecosystem™”?

Ashoka defines a “Changemaker” as someone who imagines a new reality, takes action, and collaborates with others to bring that new reality into being for the good of others.” Four key competencies are essential for changemaking success:

Conscious Empathy

Organizing Open, Fluid, Integrated Team of Teams

Changemaking Leadership

Practicing Changemaking

The most important capability of changemakers is their capacity to activate those around them to realize their own power as changemakers.

Changemaker Education is an education that helps students (at any age) build their identities and capacities as collaborative agents for change and gives them multiple opportunities to practice changemaking.

A Changemaker Ecosystem™ engages the entire community in developing changemaking capacity to address problems collaboratively. Higher education ecosystems include students, faculty, staff, and alumni. They also include school districts, families, businesses, citizen-sector organizations, governments, communities of faith, and the media. 

It is important to note that Individuals and institutions can become changemakers, and they can, therefore, empower individuals and institutions around them to similarly find their own power as changemakers.

The diverse perspectives shared in this special issue are focused on how higher education can activate ecosystems of changemakers in different ways. This issue contains two parts. Part 1: Changemaker Education focuses on the role of education within an institution of higher education to develop changemakers – primarily through helping students develop changemaking competencies. Part 2: Transforming Higher Education Ecosystems is focused on changing the contexts, systems, and structures within which higher education institutions operate. Together, these two parts present a picture of the many ways in which higher education can activate changemakers and change the communities and systems within which they operate to enable everyone in the ecosystem to realize their power as changemakers. This means that students, faculty, and administrators discover their own changemaking power. It also means that parents, alumni, K-12 teachers, and individuals in local businesses, citizen-sector organizations, and faith communities also discover their changemaking power. This is not transformation just for the sake of transformation. It is transformation that enables higher education institutions to truly create an ecosystem where everyone can realize their own power as changemakers. 

Part 1: Changemaker Education

The initiatives and examples shared in this section highlight practical ways in which higher education institutions are developing changemaking competencies of their students: through a Health Sciences Capstone course (Williams, Yessis, Hogan, and Del Matto), B Impact Teams collaborative consultancies (Joys, Yinka Thomas, Nath, and Haynes), through an “Org. School” approach (Faughnan, Tomczuk, Alan, Lang, Monhartova, and Otten), and through applying a Living Systems Framework to business education change (Kroening). Although these are focused on developing the changemaking competencies of students, these initiatives also empower changemakers across their campus and community – engaging with different departments, with local businesses and communities, and with the earth itself (our living system).

The articles in this section include:

Equipping Students as Changemakers within a Health Sciences Capstone Course at the University of Waterloo (Williams, Yessis, Hogan, and Del Matto)

Transforming Changemaker Education in Business Through B Impact Teams (Joys, Yinka Thomas, Nath, and Haynes)

Piloting ‘Krewe School’: An Org School Approach to Social Learning in Social Innovation Education (Faughnan, Tomczuk, Alan, Lang, Monhartova, and Otten)

What Life Is Guiding Us to Do to Change Business Education (Kroening)

Part 2: Transforming Higher Education Ecosystems

Graduating millions of changemakers is necessary but not sufficient. The articles in this section question and re-imagine the role of higher education in society. They point out and explore the structuring structures and political environments within which higher education institutions operate and provide insight into how to leverage this knowledge to transform higher education. Young refugees from Ukraine explore what might be possible when one has the opportunity to completely re-imagine a higher education sector (Slesarenko). Leveraging the power of international rankings has led to powerful incentives and deep learning about how higher education institutions help deliver the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the ways in which elements of their ecosystems (students, faculty, governments) can encourage this change (Baty). Using Strong Structuration Theory to research societal change and institutional change provides actionable insights useful for anyone interested in changing a higher education institution and the ecosystem within which it lives (Fuessel and Irwin). Finally, a community-based participatory action research project led to the transformation of everyone involved – reminding us that research itself is transformative (Hunter and Mitchell-Ashley).

The articles in this section include:

Rebuilding Universities of Past for Future Ukraine and Beyond (Slesarenko)

Impact Rankings: Measuring What Matters (Baty)

Innovations in Social Innovation Research: Towards Structuring Innovation Dynamics (Fuessel and Irwin)

Growing a Region of Changemakers through Community-Based Participatory Action Research: A Journey to be Shared (Hunter and Mitchell-Ashley)

As you read the articles in this issue, I hope you will begin to appreciate your own power as a changemaker and be inspired by the examples and ideas to encourage the individuals and institutions around you to discover and embrace theirs.