Dr. Boult, one of three El Pomar Professors at UCCS, is the visionary and champion behind the BI program. An innovator himself he has been involved in 3 successful startups, has 5 patents, 8 pending and over $2M in research funding. His current company, http://www.securics.com, has 3 joint projects with UCCS employing 5 undergraduate students. His Vision and Security Technology (VAST) lab, www.vast.uccs.edu, has a dozen projects and employes more than a dozen undergraduates students.	Dr. Ayen brings a wealth of business and management experience to the BI team, from being involved in startups to being Chancellor in universities, Dr. Ayen understands the team-work needed for today's innovations.	Dr. Chamillard, who leads the efforts of the BI in Game Design and Development (GDD). Dr. Chamillard's research is in CS education and in software engineering. He leads our Stegi@Work STTR effort a local company, a project that has employed 9 students, including multiple undergraduates. Dr Chamillard teaches the majority of the Game courses, and is personally leading the development of the "Bachelor of Innovation" game.
Dr. T. Boult	Dr. B. Ayen	Dr. A.T. Chamillard

The Bachelor of Innovation^TM Program is a joint effort between the UCCS College of Business and Administration (COB) and the UCCS College of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS). The individual degrees are managed by their respective departments in those colleges, with the innovation and cross-disciplinary core maintained by a committee with faculty from both colleges. The committee is currently Dr. T. Boult (chair) from Engineering and Dr. W. Ayen from the College of Business. See contact page for the points of contact for each BI degree.

The initial BI concept was developed by Dr. T. Boult, who came to UCCS in 2003, with the vision for this new degree. The BI program as it now exists has evolved as we at UCCS worked together internally and with companies in our community to define a family of degrees that address the many facets of the innovation process. We started the innovation program work within the university, developing an initial proposal that was broader in its scope. The broader proposal was then vetted by local companies in 2004/2005 and we used their feedback to refine the program to its current incarnation. Other aspects from that original proposal, such as a planned Masters of Innovation™ (MI) program, will be explored as soon as resources permit.

Getting the BI program approved would not have been possible without the strong support from, and direct involvement, of Dean J. Haefner of the College of Engineering and Applied Science and Dean V. Reddy of the College of Business and Administration. Both Deans contributed to the content of the program during the definition phases and kept the team focused on moving forward. But more importantly, these Deans accepted the challenges of pushing forward with a radical new concept during a time of fiscal crisis. When obstacles arose, they helped find paths around them. This level of change does not happen without leadership, luckily UCCS has leaders that embrace innovation.

The BI in Game Design and Development (GDD) is a totally new degree and was championed by Dr. A.T. Chamillard of Computer Science. Dr. Chamillard lead a group of faculty including:

• Professor Valerie Brodar, Visual and Performing Arts
• Polly Cegielski, Women's Studies
• Professor Clint Fisher, Education
• Professor Bob Melamede, Biology
• Professor Sudhanshu Semwal, Computer Science

All of these individuals will continue to play a role in the BI in GDD program. The GDD degree was developed independently of, and in parallel with, the BI family, allowing one program to move forward if the other stalled. Part of innovation is understanding the process by which changes, especially more radical changes, can actually be brought to fruition within an organization. Getting the BI approved required our own process innovations within UCCS and the state of Colorado. No process existed for defining a new family of degrees, only individual degrees. It has been said that successful innovators are the masters of "Plan B". The GDD program was originally aiming for joint Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Arts degrees between EAS and the College of Letters Arts and Science. Eventually the Bachelor of Arts track was dropped and a pure Bachelor of Science in GDD within EAS was defined. After both the BI Family and BS in GDD programs were approved by the College of EAS, there was sufficient synergy that the BI in GDD was defined in place of the original BS.