This story is included in the spring/summer 2024 edition of Legacy magazine.
KOKOMO, Ind.— The wall in Karla Stouse’s office tells a story.
Covered with group pictures of smiling students crowding close together in front of an English castle, or individual snapshots of students in downtown London, in front of Isaac Newton’s home, or in the middle of gardens, it showcases what could be her defining impact on Indiana University Kokomo — the Innovation Symposium.
Since its start in 2008, Stouse has led 9 expeditions, the most recent in May 2024. Other faculty members, coached by Stouse, led an Innovation Symposium in 2019 as well. Including students selected for the canceled trip in 2020, 110 students have participated in the program, through which they’ve met innovators and practiced their own innovating thinking, gained awareness of global and local issues, and developed individual projects to address global issues — and to change the world.
Stouse’s goal is for students to go beyond a tourist experience, to see that their skills and talents are needed to make the world a better place.
“They always come back more empowered,” she said. “They develop a heart for service and understand they can make a difference and share their capabilities with the world. They have more confidence. They see the world differently, and they understand they can’t remain ignorant about what’s going on out there. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. That becomes part of what you know.”
Up to 10 students can go to England during each trip. Each must be nominated by a faculty member, and then go through a selection committee that includes Innovation Symposium alumni. They spend a semester in class with Stouse, reading and researching about technology, the environment, and philanthropy, followed by three weeks in England and Scotland to apply what they’ve learned.
Previous Innovation Symposiums have included discussing social entrepreneurship at celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s foundation, which offers unemployed young people the chance to train for careers in the restaurant industry; tours of Covent Garden led by homeless people, and visits to the London Science Museum, Isaac Newton’s home, the Eden Center, the laboratory of penicillin discoverer Alexander Fleming, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the British Museum, and Westminster Abbey. They also stay at Harlaxton Manor, meeting for class twice daily, and working on their final projects.
Stouse said the program is open to students of all majors, which leads to interesting discussion and debate from varying points of view. For example, after a visit to the Bodleian Library – the main research library for Oxford University, which has “one of everything” – there was passionate debate between nursing and business majors and humanities majors on whether the collection should be digitized and sold to collectors, or remain a resource that belongs to the people.
“We live in an educational system where students don’t have those opportunities for debates and discussions. That’s my favorite part,” Stouse said. “A lot of my job is to poke students to think. Once you have this international experience, they can’t stop thinking, and that’s really what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to lead students to a place where they aren’t afraid to think, and they’re not afraid to make use of that thinking and apply it for the greater good.”
Program beginnings
The first Innovation Symposium took place in 2008, born of a Stouse’s desire to combine international travel with a service component, and a focus on technology, philanthropy, and the environment.
She had an idea of who should participate as well.
“I wanted this to be for the best and brightest, not necessarily the A students, but our best thinkers,” she said.
Worried the cost would put it out of reach for many students, she brainstormed fundraising ideas. Former chancellor Susan Sciame-Giesecke put her in touch with alumna Kathleen Ligocki, who gave a gift for the first year.
“If it had not been for Kathleen Ligocki, there would be no Innovation Symposium,” Stouse said. “With Kathleen’s money and a fortuitous donation from Francis Petro (CEO of Haynes International at the time) we had the funding to start the process.”
Cayce Arnett, BA ’09, was in the first group of travelers. An English major, her favorite part was visiting Tintagel Castle in Cornwall, which is connected to the legends of King Arthur. For her project, she developed a voucher program to offset the cost for low-income families to spay and neuter pets.
Arnett, who grew up in Tipton and now lives in Reno, Nevada, said the travel experience gave her the confidence to move overseas after she graduated from IU Kokomo. She lived in South Korea for two years, where she taught English.
“The Innovation Symposium allowed me to think bigger and think more creatively about problems in the world, rather than following some prescribed solution,” she said. “The travel aspect is huge for people like me who grew up in the Midwest and didn’t get to travel or see anything else. It empowers you to travel and see different cultures and different ways of living.
It also served as a capstone experience for her.
“It made me feel like I was important and had something to contribute to the world as I graduated and moved into my career,” she said.
Instrumental to future success
Justin Clark, B.S. ’14, said participating in the Innovation Symposium in 2012 was instrumental in his success as a professional historian.
“My experience is one of the reasons the IUPUI selection committee chose me to be part of their public history program in 2015,” he said. “They thought it was something cool that set me apart from other applicants. They were impressed by my ability to succeed in a program that was so unique. The values of entrepreneurship, creativity, and philanthropy were all instilled in me by the Innovation Symposium and were instrumental in my choice of career, and in my life.”
His project, Pages for Progress, was a book program for people to buy and send books to people in prison.
“I was very intrigued by what I saw as the deep inequities in the criminal justice system in the U.S.,” he said. “You see people of color and from poverty incarcerated for low-level crimes, and their lives are permanently shattered as a result.”
His goal was for donors to buy a book and send it themselves, and to potentially correspond with the recipient.
“I was very motivated by the issue of inequality and the injustices that exist in society, which are things I care about today,” said Clark, who lives in Indianapolis and is the digital initiatives director for the Indiana State Library.
He remembered participating in fundraisers like bake sales and book sales and working full time at a bookstore to pay for the experience. He also received a scholarship that helped with the cost.
“Doing all of these things helped me with something that transformed my life,” he said. “It might be hard, it might be daunting, but it’s doable. The Innovation Symposium was one of the most enriching experiences of my life. When I’m 80, I will think of it fondly.”
Gaining confidence in the world
As an educator at Purdue Polytechnic High School, Kristianna Upchurch, B.S. ’13, MPM ’15, draws on her Innovation Symposium experiences to urge students to take advantage of overseas travel opportunities.
“I heavily encourage them to get out there and explore,” she said. “There’s so much you can see outside the U.S., and how other countries function.”
She gained confidence in her ability to travel in another country and appreciated that Stouse prepared them to navigate on their own. She also enjoyed learning about the differences in language and food between the U.S. and Great Britain, since many people think they are similar.
“She made sure we had a good understanding of the culture,” Upchurch, from Kokomo, said. “We had to map out the Underground (subway) system, and when we traveled to events, she made sure if we got lost, we could find our way back. It was cool to have an understanding of how transportation worked, and to feel confident we could get around.”
Upchurch’s interest was in health care, so her innovation project was creating a series of tasks for people with dementia, to help them with their memory.
Finding a platform to give back
The 2016 expedition included a new twist: Students submitted group projects for the Hult Prize, a $1 million award for the innovation that best addresses a problem selected by the Hult Foundation.
The Innovation Symposium for that group included a two-semester class, working in teams instead of individually, and required launching projects. Stouse said in the past students did not have to put their projects into action.
Rob Trlak, B.S. ’17, has continued the type of work he started with his team’s project, Nova Vox, which gave a voice to unhoused people.
“People who are displaced often feel they don’t have a voice,” he said. “Homeless people in a lot of cities are big on hiding themselves. Our idea was to develop a media platform that would allow them to be a voice and not be someone speaking for them, to let them be seen as the humans they are.”
That project led to an exhibition of his photography work, with sales benefitting unhoused people. Later, it led to an invitation to El Salvador to take pictures and video for Companion Community Development Alternatives, a nonprofit organization that works in El Salvador and Nicaragua to help rural communities develop sustainable infrastructure, schools, clinics, and more.
“They invited me to come help tell their story, to raise awareness of what they are doing and help raise money,” said Trlak, from Amboy. “That’s been the biggest way the Innovation Symposium has carried on in my life, and the business has carried on.”
He’s also volunteered as a photographer on call for volunteer fire departments.
“Everyone knows we have them, and everyone knows we need them,” he said. “Their funding relies on grants and donations from the public. Taking pictures and telling their stories has helped raise awareness of that. It’s brought in more donations and more volunteers.”
He enjoyed the travel in England, but said the biggest impact has been realizing he can use his skills to benefit others.
“Finding ways I can put my camera to work to help tell stories of people who can benefit from it financially, regardless of whether I do or not, is the biggest takeaway I’ve had from Innovation Symposium,” he said.
“It’s nice getting a paycheck when I do, but there’s something more intrinsically satisfying about telling stories with my camera that benefit others and make a difference in their lives and the world. Taking pictures of someone else, making them feel seen and heard that way, it revitalizes my own humanity.”
Education is KEY at Indiana University Kokomo.