goizueta center for innovation
At Westminster, the work of teaching students to innovate is designed as an interdisciplinary journey that begins with our youngest Wildcats in Love Hall and grows through the Middle and Upper Schools. At every stage, faculty create learning experiences to emphasize that innovation begins with connections among ideas and people. By the time they graduate, students are equipped as lifelong innovators with the mindset to love challenge and the skillset to lead change.
The Roberto C. Goizueta Center for Innovation is the catalyst that drives these immersive learning experiences, allowing Westminster faculty and students of all ages to imagine, design, and discover every day. Made possible through the transformative generosity of The Goizueta Foundation, the Center gives our students the unique capacity, through the development of critical problem-seeking and -solving skills, to approach the world through a lens that is curious, optimistic, and agile.
Never be satisfied with the status quo…never be content with old solutions that might still be improved… never to reject the new and the novel simply because ‘It hasn’t been done this way before.’
Roberto C. Goizueta
Innovation Across Campus
Lower School
At Love Hall, our youngest learners discover that curiosity and empathy are central to problem seeking and solving. The Lower School’s Goizueta Catalyst Hub combined with division’s Design Thinking curriculum enable students to practice critical, creative, and collaborative thinking and ultimately develop the mindset that innovation is exciting, challenging, and everywhere! Faculty model this skillset and mindset every day as they design dynamic student experiences that are often co-taught, deeply interdisciplinary, and cutting-edge in terms of pedagogy and resources.
LoveStock
Third graders take a 12-lesson, immersive songwriting journey through song structure, rhythm, rhyme, vivid language, figurative language, and theme. The students work with professional songwriters as they explore the writing process. Students stories about all types of experiences—some joyous, some painful. And then work with professional musicians to transform their stories into songs. The projects culminate with a music festival with live performances of the student’s work.
Middle School
As students move into Clarkson Hall, they are greeted by a community and curriculum that embrace transformation and see innovation as intrinsic to the best teaching and learning for young adolescents. Since 2016, The Goizueta Catalyst Hub and its satellite STEAM carts have engaged students across all grade levels and teachers across all disciplines in innovative, project-based learning. Dynamic programs like Economics for Entrepreneurs and eighth grade electives serve as platforms for faculty leaders to cultivate the ambitious mindset students will use to thrive in Upper School.
Shark Tank
Each year, eighth grade economics students pitch the next big business idea during their "Shark Tank" presentations in the Middle School's Goizueta Innovation Hub. Students present their ideas, research, and prototypes to Westminster alumni and friends representing an impressive breadth or industries and expertise. The Shark Tank experience is a component of our 8th-grade Economics for Entrepreneurs class. Students divide into teams of 3-4, ideate and explore a challenge that needs to be solved, design a product that would support the resolution, and create a working prototype of that design. A panel of alumni or parent judges is invited to observe the demonstration and group presentation of the product, ask questions and provide feedback and select the top concepts.
Upper School
By the time students arrive in Upper School, they create as much of their academic experience as they consume. It is fitting, then, that The Robert C. Goizueta Center for Innovation expands into a collection of spaces for students to discover exactly how far they can go through experimentation, collaboration, design, and research. The Goizueta Lab and Hub in Hawkins Hall accommodates a variety of platforms for innovation in the Upper School—ranging from the Student Innovation Leadership Council to the popular Innovation and Engineering electives as well as projects embedded in core courses such as Intro to History.
Innovation Fellows
Innovation Fellows is a leadership and service-oriented for-credit course through which students develop, implement, and support programs focused on student innovation in the Upper School. Fellows serve as student leaders in the Goizueta Catalyst Lab in Hawkins Hall, maintaining proficiency in three major toolsets (3D printing, laser cutting, and virtual reality) while training and encouraging fellow students. Each Innovation Fellow also develops a project of their own design during the course of the school year. In recent years, our Innovation Fellows envisioned and led projects that ranged from video game development and design to the creation of athletic equipment to measure throwing accuracy.
WiredCats
Westminster’s Robotics Team, the WiredCats was established in 2008. Over the course of almost two decades, the team has transformed from a hobby club to a world contender with invitations to participate in the World Championships and consistently placing as a top-tier team. During the 2022-23 school year, fifteen students from the three WiredCats teams that qualified for the VEX Robotics World Championship traveled to Dallas, Texas, to compete against the best 500 teams from more than 40 countries, with one of the teams securing a spot as a top-100 team.
“Our goal is to create an academic experience that encourages students to connect their learning with the world at large. Innovation thrives through the harmony of creativity, curiosity, and passion, where Westminster students and faculty can invent, design, and build their ideas to promote positive change in our school, our communities, and beyond.”Stephen Addcox, Upper School Innovation Coordinator
