2027 Spring Innovation Series Event
Academic Entrepreneurship: The Courage to Act
Tuesday, February 16, 2027
8:30 AM to 2:30 PM
LSU Tiger Stadium (South Stadium Club) | Virtually (via Zoom)
Higher education has never lacked bold ideas. What this moment demands is the collective will to act on them. The 2027 LSU Online Innovation Series brings together faculty, administrators, and academic leaders to explore what it looks like when institutions stop waiting and start building. This year's theme, Academic Entrepreneurship: The Courage to Act, is an invitation to find the creativity, clarity, and conviction to lead meaningful change on your terms, at your institution.
Our 2027 speakers are practitioners and builders who have not just studied transformation; they have led it. They will offer honest perspectives on quality, credentials, access, and the work of institutional change, grounded in what becomes possible when institutions choose to lead.
Hosted by LSU Online, the “Innovation Series” provides the LSU community with opportunities to initiate conversations through exploring new developments, trends, and best practices in the realm of online and continuing education. These events aim to:
- promote a culture of innovation and transformational change
- explore and discuss trends in higher education and their impact on LSU
- ensure the delivery of quality online educational experiences that meet our learners' expectations
Registration Opening Soon!
Event Agenda
| TIME | SESSION |
|---|---|
| 8:30-9:00 a.m. | Registration |
| 9:00-9:15 a.m. | Welcome & Opening Remarks |
| 9:15-10:05 a.m. | Session 1: The Courage to Lead: Creating the FuturePresenter: Dr. Mark Becker; Board Chair, Commission for Public Higher Education; President Emeritus, Georgia State University Demographic shifts are reshaping enrollments, public confidence has eroded, and increasingly capable AI tools are changing how students learn, what careers await graduates, and how institutions work. In this climate, the easy path is caution: protect the status quo, avoid hard choices, and wait for someone else to go first. This session makes the case for the opposite. As president of Georgia State University, Dr. Becker led one of the most closely watched student-success transformations in the country. He made difficult executive choices about where to invest, used data to reach students before they fell behind, and approached student success with an entrepreneur’s discipline: testing ideas, measuring results, and scaling what worked. The result changed what a large, diverse, urban public research university could achieve for its students, and it produced a model emulated nationally and internationally. The central message is simple: the future of higher education will be shaped by those with the courage to envision and lead it. |
| 10:05-10:15 a.m. | Break |
| 10:15-11:05 a.m. | Session 2: The Courage to Redesign: Connecting Learning and Work to Advance OpportunityPresenter: Dr. Melanie Booth; Principal, Nectary Solutions Postsecondary education is still built on last-century assumptions: learn first, then work, with seat time and grades standing in for demonstrated capability. That system is rapidly losing its relevance, and the evidence is clear. Forty-three million Americans hold some college credit but no credential, and states and employers are dropping degree requirements in favor of verified skills. This is not a crisis to manage; it is the defining opportunity of our field. Drawing on her work with colleges, accreditors, states, and employers across the country and abroad, Dr. Booth will share examples of institutions that integrate learning, work, and contribution by design rather than as fringe experiments. These programs recognize prior learning, build credentials around real capabilities, give learners agency over their own pathways, and bring employers and community partners in as co-designers. Together, they show what it looks like to open the door to opportunity for learners from Day 1, and the courage it takes to make that redesign the norm. |
| 11:05-11:15 a.m. | Break |
| 11:15 a.m.-12:05 p.m. | Session 3: The Courage to Build: From Bold Ideas to Sustainable CapacityPresenter: Dr. Cheryl Murphy; Vice Provost for Distance Education, University of Arkansas Leading change and redesigning learning both depend on something less visible: an institution’s capacity to carry them out. The harder work, and the work that requires courage, is building that capacity so new ideas become sustainable, high-quality opportunities for learners. As financial pressures, changing regulations, and workforce demands reshape the sector, colleges and universities must make disciplined choices about what to build, for whom, with whom, and to what end. Dr. Murphy leads campus-wide online learning and faculty development at the University of Arkansas and serves on the Higher Learning Commission’s Institutional Actions Council. With more than 30 years in higher education behind her, she will explore how leaders move from aspiration to execution. She will focus on the foundations that make innovation last: well-designed online programs, meaningful support for faculty, a commitment to quality, and alignment of mission, people, resources, and accountability. The goal is not growth for growth’s sake, but lasting value for learners, communities, and the institution. |
| 12:05-1:15 p.m. | Lunch & Presentation of Awards |
| 1:15-2:15 p.m. | Session 4: The Courage to Persist: Lessons from Innovation Underway at LSU(Panel Discussion) Panelists TBD Some of the most promising work in academic entrepreneurship is already happening on LSU campuses. In this closing conversation, Dr. Cheryl Murphy will talk with faculty, staff, and administrators from across LSU about innovation already underway, the lessons emerging from that work, and the choices that move it forward. Panelists will share what moved an idea into action, how they earned support to persist, which policies or practices had to change, and what it takes for innovative ideas to last beyond a pilot |
| 2:15-2:30 p.m. | Closing Remarks |
2027 Spring Innovation Series Speakers
Dr. Mark Becker
Board Chair, Commission for Public Higher Education
Mark P. Becker, Ph.D., is a nationally recognized leader in higher education, known for driving large-scale institutional transformation, advancing student success, and championing evidence-based innovation. He is President Emeritus of Georgia State University, Chair of the Board of Directors for the Commission for Public Higher Education, serves on the Boards of Knack and Academy Within, and was President of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities following Georgia State.
Becker’s leadership in higher education has been recognized with the Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education, the Academic Leadership Award from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Honorary Degrees from Carthage College and City University of Macau, and as one of America’s Ten Most Innovative Presidents by Washington Monthly. His transformative leadership at Georgia State is profiled in Andrew Gumbel’s book Won’t Lose This Dream: How an Upstart Urban University Rewrote the Rules of a Broken System.
Before Georgia State, Becker served as Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of South Carolina, and prior to that as Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota.
An accomplished scholar, Becker previously held academic appointments at the University of Michigan, University of Washington, and University of Florida and has been elected a Fellow of both the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Melanie Booth
Principal, Nectary Solutions
Dr. Melanie Booth is the principal of Nectary Solutions, where she leads and participates in cross-sector education and social impact projects with colleges, universities, systems, states, communities, employers, industry bodies, and organizations to create and facilitate transformative initiatives that connect learning and work. Over her career, she has worked directly and indirectly with hundreds of colleges, universities, non-profits, accreditation bodies, government agencies, consulting organizations, and industry associations—both in the United States and internationally—to drive systemic transformation across the learn-and-work ecosystem. She currently serves as the appointed United States Charter Convenor for the international Contribution Exchange, as a Senior Scholar for AAC&U, and as a Social Impact Executive Fellow with Mountaintop International. She previously served as the Executive Director to jumpstart the Higher Learning Commission’s Credential Lab and Innovation Center; Vice President of Educational Programs & Engagement at NC-SARA; Founding Executive Director of The Quality Assurance Commons; and Vice President of Educational Programs at the WASC Senior College and University Commission. She is the co-founder of the international Heutagogy Community of Practice, focused on developing learner/earner agency and voice through capability recognition and development. Her recent and current work partners include IEEE, Educational Strategy Group, EDvance College (serving as interim chief academic and innovation officer), Campus Compact, the LER Accelerator Coalition, and several other organizations, colleges, and universities.
Dr. Cheryl Murphy
Vice Provost for Distance Education; University of Arkansas
Dr. Cheryl Murphy is the Vice Provost for Distance Education at the University of Arkansas and oversees the Global Campus unit, which leads campus-wide online and professional development activities. Her areas of expertise include online learning in higher education, the use of technology to enhance learning, and accreditation. She is a full professor with numerous publications and presentations to her credit and has assumed a variety of administrative positions in her 30 year career including Program Coordinator, Department Head, Director of Distance Learning, and Co-Director of the Teaching and Faculty Support Center in addition to her current Vice Provost position. Dr. Murphy has served in leadership roles for numerous higher education organizations including positions within UPCEA on the Council for Credential Innovation, Diversity and Inclusive Excellence Committee, Council for Chief Online Learning Officers, and Board of Directors. She has also served as a Peer Consultant Reviewer, Team Chair, and currently sits on the Institutional Actions Council for the Higher Learning Commission.