Nathan Schwagler
Graduation year: 2008
Home: Tampa Bay, FL
Website: LinkedIn profile
Teaching: Deliberate Creativity in the B school.
Prior to completing the MS in Creative Studies, Nathan entered graduate business school in a Master of Science degree program titled: Entrepreneurship in Applied Technologies – a fancy degree title that basically means: how to launch a technology company. Essentially, it was a 10-course blend of tools and skills to assist the person who thinks they want to get involved in the creation and implementation of something new.
While reading the textbooks, he couldn’t help but notice all of the instances that the terms creativity and innovation were being used. Consequently, he started flagging page corners and realized this was something worthy of further investigation.
Since then, he’s come to believe that entrepreneurs – as well as the greater business community – know that they need to be creative; they just have limited understanding of what to do about it.
Simply doing the basics professed at the ICSC, such as: steadfastly using affirmative judgment when evaluating ideas (even when it hurts); applying facilitation best-practices during team-based exercises; and promoting the deliberate separation of divergence and convergence, professors began asking him to come in and speak to classes about how the students could re-connect with their own creative thinking skills to become more effective business professionals (read: better thinkers).
This recently turned into an opportunity to join the USF Saint Petersburg College of Business as an adjunct instructor of a course on Creativity in Entrepreneurship (imagine CRS 559 with an emphasis on business vocabulary).
What really makes the opportunity special is that the administrators of the Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation Alliance believe that creativity is so important for successfully launching and sustaining a venture, that they’ve decided to make the creativity course foundational and mandatory – meaning everyone must take it!
This foresight has resulted in an opportunity for Nathan to also serve the program as “Creative-In-Residence”, tasked with providing curriculum consultation around integrating creative thinking tools/skills into the remaining courses.
Nathan is absolutely interested in any insights the creative studies community might offer to support the initiative(s); and he would like you to kindly consider sharing your unique wisdom and experience with him. Thank you!!
