What do an historical society, natural history museum and botanical garden have in common?  What outcomes might arise as a result of a collaboration between three seemingly disparate organizations?  The significance of Bruce Latimer's disclosure before half-a-hundred people gathered for Wednesday's Commmunity of Minds program on the Case Campus has as much to do with process and outcomes as anything that University Circle institutions have attempted before.

       Latimer said that the unique collaboration was an effort to change the experience for visitors to University Circle organizations.  What was unstated was the collaboration's impact upon the institutions themselves. 

       Recently, University Circle member institutions have been scurrying to sharpen their mission and processes as the effects of the region's economic performance are felt by NEO's most important centers of intellectual property.  The inertia that many sense in the region demands that organizations' audiences are served at levels of global excellence.   

       Latimer touted the Natural History Museum's competency in anthropology and  sustainable  practices, yet was unable to  identify  opportunities for its intellectual property to benefit the region's economy.  A likely outcome of the collaboration will be to answer this and other questions arising from the need to better relate intellectual property to outcomes that benefit the region's economy, as it becomes ever more dependent upon  ideas as the source of innovation and entrepreneurship.   

       In order for Case President Edward M. Hundert's vision of the world's most powerful learning environment to become reality, closer collaboration between all UC organizations must occur.  For much of the history of University Circle there has been little collaboration between organizations, except for relatively trivial housekeeping activities, that University Circle, Inc., has effectively promoted.  

       Latimer decried the crisis driven approach to global environmental problems that, in his view, predomininates in today's world.  He urged more collaborative solutions to problems as an altenative to practices that he said are destroying the sustainablity of the earth's eco-systems.   Among the  practices  that he pointed to is the continued pollution of the Great Lakes' waters with heavy metal discharges.