Can Creativity be Taught?
Introduction by President Steven Tepper
CREATIVITY IS A POWERFUL FORCE to advance our democracy and our planet because it helps us imagine alternative futures, fuels empathy and connection, drives civic engagement, and fosters adaptable and resilient individuals and communities.
Yet, as much as creativity is celebrated, it can also be misunderstood. Our notions of creativity often feel fragile, unpredictable, and temporary — tied to charismatic artists, inventors, or entrepreneurs, and, importantly, rooted in historical notions of individual genius. Creativity is seen as a rare and exclusive innate trait, something specific people have that others do not.
Research, however, proves otherwise. As I’ve studied and written about with my colleague Terence McDonnell at the University of Notre Dame, creativity isn’t simply a product of personality or individual psychology, but rather is rooted in a set of teachable competencies.
In many ways, Hamilton embodies the spirit of a “creative campus.” Our commitment to an open curriculum encourages connections between students and faculty across disciplines. Ideas that occur outside the classroom are brought into the classroom, leading to research and original discovery. This is a place where students are encouraged to cultivate creative competencies — break from conventions, embrace ambiguity, take risks, learn to take feedback and radically revise a concept or design, collaborate on emerging ideas, and pursue “what if” thinking, storytelling, and reasoning with analogies.
In many ways, Hamilton embodies the spirit of a “creative campus.” Our commitment to an open curriculum encourages connections between students and faculty across disciplines.
These competencies require rigor and practice, building muscle, mastering tools and methodologies. They also require the right culture, where creativity is about the better, the revised, and the evolved.
Creativity — Imagining and developing original ideas, approaches, works, and interpretations, and solving problems resourcefully.
Developing and refining such skills seem to be exactly what 21st-century undergraduates want. In a continuing national study of creativity and academic choices, 84 percent of undergraduates said creativity is an important or very important skill. As many as 54 percent said pursuing careers that allow them to be creative is important or essential. Other studies have noted the high percentage of students today who express their creativity by designing websites and blogs and posting their own music, fiction, or poetry online. With new digital technologies, open-source networks, and a proliferation of highly skilled amateur artists, scientists, designers, and inventors, we are witnessing a renaissance in creativity and culture that colleges and universities can ill afford to ignore.
Creativity lies at the heart of artistic practice, of course, but it also leads to innovations in technology, public policy, business, and medicine, separating leaders from followers. By encouraging our students to build creative competencies, they’ll have the courage to imagine a better future and the skills to inspire others to help achieve it.
Kevin Grant, the Edgar B. Graves Professor of History
In our day-to-day lives, we have often seen a particular moment of instability before, so in responding we choose from a set of options provided by our experience. In contrast, in intellectual endeavors, and especially in the midst of new subjects, instability requires a creative response.
So, I attempt to build instability into my courses or introduce instability into my individual conversations with students. This can be achieved by leaving space for junctures in discussion at which students might turn in multiple, hopefully unanticipated directions or by simply bringing to discussion questions to which I, the instructor, genuinely do not have answers.
“Students are never more focused than when the instructor does not know how to proceed or is stumped by a question ... At that moment the students and the instructor are in it together with no specific end in sight.”
Students are never more focused than when the instructor does not know how to proceed or is stumped by a question — especially a student’s question. The students are focused because at that moment they really get to see how the instructor thinks. At that moment the students and the instructor are in it together with no specific end in sight.
That’s when creativity happens.
Tina May Hall, associate dean of faculty and professor of literature and creative writing
Slow Down
The conventional advice to aspiring writers and artists to put down the phone and really engage with the world is easier said than done. Some people use journaling to take note of the interesting and bizarre and delightfully mundane happenings of everyday life. Some people use Instagram posts. Whatever works for you, take a few moments each day for deep observation. Keep a scent diary or a flipbook of bitter things. Make a running tally of favorite overheard phrases. Start a sketchbook of neighborhood dogs or an herbarium of humble weeds. Take a photo of the same tree every morning at the same time for a month or a year or a decade.
Speed Up
In class, I often make use of timed writing exercises. The more constraints we add to our writing, the squirmier our brains get, which leads to exciting leaps and breakthroughs. So, set a timer for 90 seconds and write something using only one-syllable words. Add a chicken. Make it a love poem to a stranger or an item in your house that you couldn’t live without. Start over. Write for two minutes about gifts you’ve given and received. Spend another minute constructing the history of one of the gifts — dream up the backstory of your grandmother’s hairbrush or the quarter for the parking meter or the cake left on the doorstep. Use the last two minutes to write an unexpected consequence for the gift — is it a murder weapon, the impediment to an engagement, an artifact found in a dig 400 years from now, the thing that will be saved from the fire?
Whether we speed up or slow down, the key is to momentarily break our normal patterns and allow our thoughts to get strange, to go to unexpected places, to find the cracks that suddenly widen into beautiful expanses that feel like freedom — and then start exploring, line by line.
Adam Stockwell, men’s basketball coach and professor of physical education
The creativity of players like these to perform in a way that has never been seen is a consistent trend that happens over and over again as decades pass in sports. Unique players push the comfort of what was traditionally done and display something imagined and original. This creativity fuels the passion around sports for fans and spectators as there is always the possibility of seeing something unique, historic, or creative at any game.
Coaches have the wonderful up-close opportunity to support athletes as they strive and grow to reach their individual potential. Positive reinforcement, consistent communication, and building relationships centered on trust are tremendous tools for coaches to encourage athletes. Ultimately, coaches who use these tools well allow athletes the courage to make mistakes, achieve at unique levels and, in many cases, see creativity flourish.
Stephen Wu, the Irma M. and Robert D. Morris Professor of Economics
As a social scientist, I am interested in understanding how the world works, how people interact with one another, and how they respond to various incentives. In my classes and meetings with students, I encourage them to observe the world around them, and to be particularly mindful of even small details that at first glance might seem inconsequential, but could lead to interesting research ideas.
Research questions could originate from one’s personal experiences: Can having an unfamiliar name hurt my job prospects? Or through hearing stories about people in the local community: How does the connection with one’s local community impact the well-being of refugees in Utica, New York? Or by reading about changes in state laws: How does the legalization of sports betting impact people’s mental health?
Heather Buchman, the John L. Baldwin, Jr. Professor of Music and director of the College Orchestra
As teachers we model being curious and flexible. Rehearsals do not always go as planned, so I regularly find myself reaching for something new and out of the box to shake things up. Last night it was having students stand on the podium and try to “lead” the orchestra by counting aloud the meter and tempo. It definitely gave them a different perspective on what it takes (from both conductor and players) to hold the orchestra together!
“For musicians, creativity and a level of spontaneity are what allow the music to sound fresh whether it was written last week or 500 years ago.”
Analytic discernment includes learning how to play in tune, with accurate rhythm. Aesthetic discernment encompasses learning how to play in a particular style (Romantic, Renaissance, jazz, etc.) and the right sound quality and balance. Disciplinary practice is getting command of your instrument so that you can produce all of these musical possibilities at a high artistic level. While getting all of these things in place, an artist also needs to find their voice both literally and figuratively. If we’re playing (or conducting) a piece by Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky, or Susato — once we have the basics down, then we can get creative in our interpretation and color the music with our own artistic voice.
For musicians, creativity and a level of spontaneity are what allow the music to sound fresh whether it was written last week or 500 years ago. As a classically trained musician, I feel the need to challenge myself creatively by exploring improvisation and composition. I encourage students to push their own comfort zones to explore all of these creative pathways.
Russell Marcus, the Christian A. Johnson Excellence in Teaching Professor of Philosophy
To help students perform the creative acts that make learning exciting and useful, about a decade ago I started to develop classroom practices called team-based learning for philosophy. In classes on logic, epistemology, or educational theory, students spend their class time in small teams working through carefully crafted activities designed to help them approach complex questions collaboratively. They hone skills of listening and responding, of working together in the space of reasons. They share their stories and seek consensus. They form productive working relationships that help them to understand the big questions and to discover and refine their own views about them. And, even in this frustratingly polarized time, they learn to embrace differences.
As one student, Chloe Knerr ’26, said about her team, “All of us were consistently eager to consider viewpoints beyond those that we had chosen.”
That’s where learning, and creating, begins.
Karen Brewer, the Silas D. Childs Professor in Agricultural Chemistry
But, I argue, that the research lab is very much a creative space where chemists pursue processes never before observed, create new molecules, find patterns in reactivity, and design ways to measure the molecular world. Research rarely proceeds by-the-book. It asks potentially unanswerable questions and will likely involve many false starts, some blind alleys, and abject failures. This is what starts the creative process again — What different approach could I use? Is there a better way to see what is happening? Can I build the molecule from different building blocks?
“Yes, it is great when an experiment works, but the fun of science isn’t really about getting the ‘right’ answer, but rather in the ‘chase’ of doing experiments and in thinking about all the new questions that follow.”
Furthermore, collaboration is key in chemical research and is the ultimate creative space where the laboratory is a “studio” where we make and measure together. At Hamilton, we initiate and foster students’ creativity in our courses and by inviting them to work with us in our research labs. I think visitors to our labs would witness the creativity emerging from the hive of activity in the summer research lab with students in lab coats and safety glasses and in the conference room of the Research Methods 371 as students formulate ideas for their own research projects.
Someone (not a scientist) once remarked to me that “it must feel great to finish an experiment.” I was puzzled, because, yes, it is great when an experiment works, but the fun of science isn’t really about getting the “right” answer, but rather in the “chase” of doing experiments and in thinking about all the new questions that follow. In a way, then, chemistry (and science and all knowledge pursuits) involves a lifelong addiction to creativity.
Anna Huff, assistant professor of digital arts
I lead my own classrooms in very similar ways. I start courses by telling my students they are tasked with locating their voice within a shared cultural framework. Their voice should stand out as a rupture. Creativity is inherently connected to their ability to disrupt, and then resynthesize ideas they encounter or may even take for granted. Some specific examples of cultivating creativity in my classes involve getting students outside of the classroom or trying to create an environment for them to encounter something in a way not originally intended. For example, what happens if they use a real estate touring app to tell a personal story? What happens when a set of open lockers becomes a projection surface for videos? What kinds of new ideas will they generate if they all read a different theoretical text and form a shared question by translating across those different perspectives? Along with disorientation comes an opening and a space of access. I hope to create permission for them to fail, then piece things back together again.
Ascott believed that the self is a process always in a state of becoming and always informed by our changing cultural environment. My hope is that through encouraging students to locate their voice, and to step into these moments of disorientation and reorientation, they can find themselves in a generative community of learning, creating, and unlearning again.
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