Reimagining Higher Education Together: The CoGen Big Ideas Challenge

Last Updated on October 28, 2025, 11:51 am ET

Editor’s note: The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is an outreach partner of the CoGenerate Big Ideas Challenge to Reimagine Higher Education. CoGenerate contributed this guest blog post about the challenge, which seeks visionary ideas and innovations to transform campuses into centers for intergenerational collaboration and learning.

What might it look like if people of all ages learned, worked, and created together on our campuses?

That question is at the heart of the CoGen Big Ideas Challenge to Reimagine Higher Education, an open call for ideas and innovations that bring generations together in meaningful ways.

CoGenerate’s goal is to elevate ideas that can transform colleges and universities into thriving centers for intergenerational collaboration and learning while fostering economic opportunity, lifelong learning, and institutional sustainability.

Why Now

Higher education is in a period of transition. Institutions are adapting to demographic shifts and changing learner needs, while rethinking long-term sustainability. At the same time, adults in midlife and beyond represent one of the fastest-growing groups of learners, workers, and community members. It’s an opportunity few campuses have fully explored.

The Role of Research Libraries

Research libraries can act as the most intergenerational spaces on campus, welcoming students, faculty, alumni, and lifelong learners. Libraries embody the values that make collaboration across ages possible: openness, curiosity, and stewardship of knowledge. They also serve as natural bridges across disciplines and communities.

Many libraries are already experimenting with new approaches to engagement, from community archives and digital storytelling to mentorship programs and partnerships that connect scholarship with lived experience. The Big Ideas Challenge is an invitation to imagine what could come next.

Libraries can be powerful conveners for intergenerational collaboration and social impact. They might partner with continuing education or outreach programs to design multigenerational learning opportunities, host storytelling or research projects that connect students with community members to bring local history to life, or collaborate across departments to explore how learning across ages can strengthen community and purpose. Even helping to share this opportunity across campus networks can spark meaningful new partnerships and ideas.

About the Big Ideas Challenge

Presented by CoGenerate in partnership with Campus Compact and supported by the MetLife Foundation, the Big Ideas Challenge seeks up to five visionary models that reimagine higher education as a place where people of all ages can learn, work, and thrive together.

Big Ideas may take many forms, such as intergenerational housing or co-teaching models, civic or business incubators, workforce initiatives, or creative redesigns of campus systems. What they share is a focus on bringing younger and older learners together in meaningful ways, aligning with institutional priorities such as enrollment, workforce development, and community impact, and demonstrating potential institutional transformation and long-term sustainability.

Selected innovators will receive a professionally produced video featuring their Big Idea, take part in a four-month peer learning cohort with coaching and storytelling support, and gain national visibility through a virtual showcase and field-shaping report. Their work will also be highlighted at Compact26, including a breakfast with university presidents and senior leaders.

Apply Now

We hope you will help spread the word and submit your own Big Idea.

Applications are open through Thursday, October 23, at 5:00 p.m. PT/8:00 p.m. ET.

Learn more and apply today at https://cogenerate.org/big-ideas/