DI Vision and Mission

OUR VISION:
 

To be a global leader in cultivating collaborative mindsets that empower individuals to address society’s most complex challenges with creativity and purpose.

OUR MISSION:
 

We produce innovators. We provide spaces, services, and resources to help the Kent State community learn how to think and act innovatively, inspiring innovative solutions that lead to meaningful, positive change.

OUR VALUES:
 

1. Collaboration as a Mindset and Ethos: We embrace an ethos of collaborative innovation where ideas, resources, and efforts come together across disciplines, transcending barriers and biases.
2. Empathy, Respect, and Diversity: Human-centered design and the incorporation of diverse perspectives are at the core of our work, ensuring inclusive solutions that address real-world challenges.
3. Student-Centered Engagement: We prioritize learning through hands-on, challenge-based innovation, empowering students as leaders and problem-solvers.
4. Interdisciplinary Exploration: By activating intersections between fields, we create opportunities for dynamic collaboration that generate novel insights and solutions.
5. Accessible Resources and Ecosystem: We are a "Shared by all. Owned by all." initiative, ensuring equitable access to makerspaces, resource labs, and tools that enable creation and discovery.
6. Dynamic Problem-Solving Processes: From framing challenges to testing and iterating solutions, our approach encourages curiosity, resilience, and the courage to learn through failure.
7. Building Networks and Teams: We cultivate interdisciplinary networks and partnerships that bring together collective expertise to address complex, human-centered problems.
8. Empowering Temporary Unity: We inspire individuals to collaborate across boundaries, building awareness, confidence, and capacity to make meaningful change.
9. Continuous Innovation: Through making, fixing, exploring, iterating, and refining, we embrace the iterative nature of innovation as a journey, not a destination.