Grounded in an ethic of social justice and an imperative to enhance the public good, our graduates pursue careers that meaningfully impact the lives of individuals and create tangible benefits for society. We will leverage our existing resources, values, and expertise to focus on applied and translational research and learning that connects individual departments, disciplines, and professions to seize upon the shifting demands for interprofessional skill sets for and from our graduates as well as a societal demand for nuanced approaches to addressing pervasive problems.

What is particularly striking about our academic programs is the college-spanning aptitude for preparing our students for a wide range of in-demand professions that are grounded in unleashing the power of learning to be a force for positive change in the lives of individuals, organizations, and communities. While many of our graduates go on to more traditional roles within this space (e.g., teachers, counselors, librarians), a significant number of our graduates also advance learning through roles that demonstrate their exceptional adaptiveness in the professional world and the broader relevance of the values and skill sets we engender in them (e.g., research analysts, diversity and inclusion consultants, creative directors, curriculum specialists).

As the problems affecting our communities become increasingly multifaceted, our approach to finding solutions and helping those in need must be comprehensive and nimble. To prepare our students for a professional world that requires multifaceted skills to respond to society’s complex issues, we can lead the way in higher education by deliberately working across specialty areas to address the pervasive problems of learning and wellness that cross disciplines, professions, and departments. At its core, an interprofessional approach at Morgridge means “learning with others to solve a common goal.”

There are few, if any, other colleges (let alone colleges of education) that already possess the resources, knowledge, and capacity required to link the professions advanced at Morgridge in a manner that rises to the occasion lying before the industry of higher education to expand its civic impact and to fulfill the career-related demands of today’s students. By uniting the exceptional spread of professions cultivated, encouraged, and advanced through the learning and teaching already happening at Morgridge, there is enormous potential to greatly increase the societal influence of the College, both as a college community of faculty, staff, and students and in terms of the impact made by our graduates after they leave.

Perhaps most importantly, the draw for Morgridge to embrace interprofessional education into our core identity as a college is that it is not limited to only one group of our constituents. Instead, an interprofessional approach to advancing learning and to solving societal issues makes use of the expertise and skill sets of everyone connected to Morgridge, across faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community partners.

Imagine a college-wide initiative to tackle, for instance, rural access to education: a core Think & Action team, drawing on the research conducted by faculty and students to know which gaps to fill and which actions to prioritize, leads the charge to create meaningful, mutually beneficial partnerships with relevant community members. As we extend our reach on this issue, we utilize our alumni who are already working in the professions that can make critical changes a reality (like teachers, policy-makers, psychologists, researchers) in rural locations across the state of Colorado and beyond.

As societal issues become increasingly complex and less solvable through one-size-fits-all solutions, we will utilize methods that link systems in ways that will pave the way for breakthroughs on longstanding, complicated and systemic problems such as educational achievement gaps across minority and low-income populations. Embracing an intersystems approach, we will collaborate internally across multiple fields of expertise, serve as a convener within the community, and conduct research on the best ways to connect systems for positive outcomes.

Involving the resources of disparate systems is the only way that we can affect the change necessary to address the complex issues facing our society today and in the future. In order to address an issue like adverse childhood experiences—which present educators with significant challenges, particularly with regard to student disengagement and outcomes—it is necessary to involve the education, mental health, and judicial systems, including key components such as teacher education, early childhood special education, educational leadership, school psychology, and school counseling.

Education cannot fully address multifaceted issues like childhood trauma alone. By serving as the convener and the leader in the cutting-edge space of uniting systems to tackle complex societal issues of human health and development, we greatly expand our ability to provide meaningful solutions for the communities we serve. Our exciting new work with Project ECHO is an example of the intersystems approach and the opportunity we have before us to serve as a leader in this space, and the value that big data and technology can play in linking systems to serve our community.

Combining the passions, research interests, and expertise of our faculty and staff with engaged students, seasoned Morgridge alumni, and collaborators from a range of organizations within various systems would generate the proven practices required to tackle these big issues as well as the influence necessary to tackle their root causes through systemic and policy-driven change. The Think & Action Collaborative described in Goal 1 is essential to support this work. Not only does such an approach play a role in facilitating new partnerships and opportunities for collaboration across the College and University community, it would help position Morgridge to partner with external industries, businesses, nonprofits, institutions of higher education, and government agencies. The partnership with the National Mental Health Innovation Center (NMHIC) at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus is an example of the relationships we could foster through an intersystems approach to advancing learning and to addressing societal issues related to education.