Mission Statement

CoRaL could exist at the intersection of collaboration and creativity, enabling progressive development through cross-disciplinary, risk-less experiments and workshops for the entire community– faculty, staff and students. This could serve as a center for the liberal arts, a laboratory for the exploration of how better to teach and to learn.

CoRaL could house a working collection of natural and man-made objects, sophisticated digital support and creation technologies, and flexible work and study spaces. As such, it could enable students, staff and faculty to explore the intersections of unfamiliar disciplines. Central to this function could be a program of ongoing workshops that could explore these intersections through methods of experimentation, both scientific and unconventional. For example, linguists, dancers, mathematicians, and musicians could team up to introduce a workshop examining the relationships between movement and cognition. These workshops could be proposed by anyone in the college community, furthering our mission to promote an ethos of lateral learning.

In addition to these exciting intellectual exchanges, we predict that CoRaL could act as a powerful uniting institution for individuals from all corners of campus who might otherwise not have an opportunity to interact. As a magnet for community interaction, CoRaL could create a more engaged community by fostering dialogue surrounded by collaborative work and inspiring visual collections.