The Art of Innovation

By Meghan Haile

I’d like to begin with a bit of my experience with my first year of the Innovation Academy and the University of Florida. I am an anthropology major with an indigenous studies minor as well as a large visual arts background – I have always been more of a liberal arts student than science and technology. When I share that, it comes with two questions: “Oh cool! What is anthropology again?” and “Oh! Then why’d you choose the Innovation Academy?” It’s an understandable question! At first thought, anthropology doesn’t entail a lot of robotics, business or any relation with tech. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. I honestly didn’t know how to answer the latter question. Why was I here? I knew what I could offer others with the humanist perspective of the discipline, but what could I learn from the program? And honestly, it took talking to many people to see just a few possibilities. An archaeology professor I went to for academic and career advice talked to me about a woman she knew who began her own consulting firm between museum institutions and Native American Nations to satisfy the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. The intersectionality of disciplines is something I would never have thought of or understood before my IA experience.

The Innovation Academy will teach you just that: innovation. It will do so in the literal sense as you learn prototyping and various technologies, but also in your mindset. I can relate it to my education in art; whenever there is talk of creativity, the right brain always comes into conversation as the artist’s brain responsible for creativity and imagination. Like any painter or drawer, there isn’t just a set of muscle memory or following steps. It is a completely different way of thinking about situations and the world, to see the most colorful and dynamic of it. Innovation is the same exact way: it fosters your brain. Your perspective gets shifted in a more critical and experimental direction; not taking the world at face value.

And this comes back to the anthropology conundrum of freshman me. From this one example, I started to see an infinite amount of future possibilities; there were so many values that were part of the Innovation Academy including entrepreneurship, leadership, connecting with various types of people, and problem solving. I now work at the Lynx Bookstore and couldn’t be happier with my place there, lifting up the voice and presence of this community. I’ve been able to put my skills from IA to use in combination with knowledge from past experiences: adapting to new technologies from IA, the understanding of others from Anthropology, and even the visual skills from art. I also plan on taking all this and more into my future career as I volunteer with the Florida Museum’s collections and the Gainesville Fine Arts Association. The common thread of this all: I want to work with first nations in Florida and the country to help revive and honor traditional arts practices.

With that said, I’d like to help anyone who may be having worries about past, present, and future decisions that come with this new stage in life. I assure you: You can have your cake and eat it, too. You can take hold of your station and make it prosperous for you and your future with the right work and resources. If you look at your future with the bare minimum mindset, you risk limiting that future. There will always be a place in any future path you choose where you can stand out and do something new and innovative but also something you love. No matter if you have a STEM concentration or a passion for the arts and culture, the Innovation Academy will help you in the most unexpected ways. It will not only give you the mindset to think of new possibilities, but will also give you strategies and resources to make those possibilities become reality. There are people here rooting for your excellence: faculty, staff, and friends. With the skills and connections you take into the future, which is inevitably full of new technologies and problems to be solved regardless of your field, you all are going to be best prepared to learn, utilize or create an innovative future.