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The Lee Iacocca Institute for Global Leadership at Lehigh University has been selected as part of the inaugural Innovation Sandbox cohort, joining 48 other institutions from around the world in a yearlong program focused on advancing innovation in higher education.

The Innovation Sandbox is a new international higher education initiative launched by the Future Universities Alliance, an initiative of Duke University. Through this program, representatives from 49 institutions across 23 countries and 5 continents will collaborate to advance institution-level innovation in higher education.

“One of the most exciting aspects of higher education today is not innovation itself, but creating the conditions that allow innovation to be shared, challenged, adapted, and sustained across very different institutional contexts,” said Cheryl Matherly, Vice President and Vice Provost for International Affairs at Lehigh.

“I am delighted that the Lee Iacocca Institute for Global Leadership at Lehigh University is part of this inaugural cohort and excited to serve on the advising team,” Matherly said. “I look forward to learning alongside colleagues from around the world as we collectively explore new possibilities for the future of higher education.”

The program will enable universities to exchange ideas, explore new approaches, and learn from peers operating in diverse educational and cultural environments around the world, according to Leah Mason, Interim Executive Director of the Lee Iacocca Institute for Global Leadership.

Founded in 1988, the Lee Iacocca Institute for Global Leadership cultivates global leadership proficiencies of current and emerging leaders at Lehigh University and beyond through experiential learning programs, education and consulting, and applied scholarship.

“The Lee Iacocca Institute for Global Leadership was created to prepare leaders to navigate complex challenges that cross borders, sectors, and cultures,” Mason said. “Participating in the Innovation Sandbox allows us to contribute to and learn from a global community of institutions that are reimagining what higher education can be.”

Building on the successful history of Lehigh’s Global Citizenship program, the Institute’s proposed Innovation Sandbox project will develop a sequence of academic courses that leverage this foundation to refocus on global leadership, open to all Lehigh students.

The global leadership curriculum will be rooted in OIA’s pedagogical approach, SOWL (self-other-world learning), which emphasizes the personal, relational, and systemic/systems thinking aspects of global leadership.

With the understanding that the ability to think, plan, create, and facilitate projects globally lies at the core of leadership in any field in the 21st century, the project’s intent is to prepare future global leaders who are self-aware, who can articulate their why, and who are committed to a positive collective future.

At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that creating a global leadership program housed within an Office of International Affairs is a natural space to position such a program, strategically aligning mission and resources by offering a global context and supporting students’ shift in worldview. OIA work is fundamentally interdisciplinary, integrating perspectives from business, engineering, political science, and health across its curriculum and programming. 

The Innovation Sandbox is a 12-month peer-learning program in which participating institutions bring active challenges and projects into structured collaboration with peers from around the world.

 "Higher education is not short of innovation, but it is short of the structures needed to connect that innovation, help it travel, and make it durable," said Noah Pickus, founder of the Future Universities Alliance and Head of Global Strategy and Partnerships at Duke University. “The Innovation Sandbox is designed to create those structures.”

 Participating institutions come from Australia, Botswana, Germany, Ghana, Honduras, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Tanzania, Thailand, Türkiye, Uganda, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Their work spans AI-enabled learning, applied STEM and agriculture, liberal arts renewal, venture creation, curriculum redesign, credential innovation, and models built around learners poorly served by existing structures, according to the Future Universities Alliance.

“What connects these institutions is not innovation for its own sake,” Pickus said. “It is a shared conviction that the central questions facing higher education are fundamentally about what constitutes high-quality learning, how we know it when we see it, and how it can reach more students in more places.”

Beginning in July, participants will engage in monthly facilitated discussions, collaborative small-group “pods,” and structured exchanges focused on innovation in higher education. They will convene in person at the Global Summit at Duke in October 2026.

The Future Universities Alliance was launched in January 2026 as a global learning network, incubated by Duke University, to connect higher-education innovators and help promising ideas spread across institutions and national contexts. It grew out of the New Global Universities Summit in 2024.

Previously located at the Mountaintop Campus and known as the Iacocca Institute, the Lee Iacocca Institute for Global Leadership was renamed earlier this year and moved to the Rauch Business Center, a reflection of its evolving scope and growing emphasis on leadership development, cross-cultural engagement and globally focused experiential learning.