Welcome back! It's the start of another academic year at Duke -- but this year brings something new to Duke's curriculum.
Launching this semester -- Fall 2025 -- is the **Constellation Experience** for incoming freshmen.
What does that mean?
Excellent question. According to the website, constellations are:
...year-long, multidisciplinary, first-year experiences designed to build communities among first year students. They comprise interconnected courses that explore a topic from multiple perspectives and feature small group learning.
Personally, I love the inter-disciplinary approach; since each constellation is comprised of multiple courses from a variety of different departments, it means that there's a real potential benefit in understanding how different disciplines not only *see* each question, but how they approach it. It's the "intention" that I find really helpful -- it's really easy to move through academic life with your disciplinary blinders on, and I'm excited for the possible collaborations.
The constellation I'm a part of is the Innovation and Creativity one; it initially also had "curiosity" as a part of the description, so I've kept that aspect of it in my course. Our guiding question is:
What drives us to Innovate & Create?
Decoding Disney is, to me, a logical fit here. After all, innovation & creativity are at the heart of the Disney Company, however you feel about it. And curiosity too. One of my favorite Disney quotes addresses all three of these things in a concise way:
The 2007 film Meet the Robinsons ends with this quote -- and before we fade to complete black, Walt's name appears at the bottom, and the words "We keep moving forward" (the motto of the film) are emphasized as the rest of the quote fades away.
Which part of the quote --if any of it -- is directly attributed to Walt Disney isn't quite clear. That is, "moving forward" was absolutely a part of his philosophy when it came to the parks and films, but this quote is most likely not by Walt himself. According to a Reddit post (not the most verifiably credible of sources, I know), the Disney Archives credit these words to WED Enterprises, aka Disney Imagineering.
What drives us to innovate and create?
To Disney, the answer seems to be curiosity.
Is it any more complicated than that? That's what I hope to find out this semester with my students. Come back each Wednesday -- hopefully! 😅 -- for thoughts on Innovation and Creativity!
