At the Carolyn Smith Innovation Center, students are encouraged to look at a problem and ask a different question: What if there is another way to do this?

And that kind of thinking can lead in any number of directions. It might mean finding a new use for something that would otherwise be discarded, developing a business around an unmet need, creating a better way for students to connect with volunteer opportunities, or stepping into a flight simulator to put classroom lessons into practice.

The answers aren't always obvious…and that's the point.

Inside the Innovation Center, students are being challenged to not simply learn information, but to use it to think creatively, solve problems, test ideas, and discover what happens when something they have imagined begins to take shape.

For Program Director Mary Beth Allen, those experiences are an important part of preparing students for what comes after high school.

“The goal of the Innovation Center is to provide experiences for our Sumner County Schools high school students who are interested in taking a class or getting involved in a program that they’re interested in for a future career that they may not offer at their zone schools,” Allen said.

Now in its first full year, the Carolyn Smith Innovation Center offers programs in aviation, project management and leadership, criminal justice, entrepreneurship, and content creation.

Students remain enrolled at their home high schools and travel to the center for specialized courses before returning to their schools for the remainder of the day.

Across those programs, students are given opportunities to move beyond simply talking about ideas and begin doing something with them.

Perhaps nowhere is that more visible than in entrepreneurship.

Students in the program aren't simply studying how a business operates. Instead, they are being challenged to identify a problem or need, determine their customer base, develop a solution, and then test the solution to determine whether it has the potential to become a viable business.

“They’re building a business model, they’re building prototypes, and then they pitch that business to potential investors at the end of the semester,” Allen said.

Using the INCubator.edu curriculum, students work through the process of developing their ideas as an entrepreneur would do so outside of the classroom.

“They are essentially thinking about all aspects of their business and how they can apply that to find a real customer base and solve a problem or need in the community,” Allen said.

The ideas students have developed demonstrate just how many directions that kind of thinking can take.

The ten student groups currently developing businesses include students who are creating a landscaping venture, as well as others who are exploring an energy drink made with healthier ingredients and geared toward teenagers.

Still another group began with something much simpler: used tennis balls.

The students, who are tennis players themselves, began exploring whether the material from discarded tennis balls could be given another purpose by turning it into insoles for athletic shoes.

With access to the Innovation Center's fabrication lab and 3D printers, they are now working toward creating a prototype.

It's a small example of a much larger lesson taking place throughout the building: Innovation often begins by learning to look at something familiar in an unfamiliar way.

For students in project management and leadership, that mindset is being directed toward serving their community.

Students spend two days each week in a dual enrollment course taught by a college professor and the other three days putting those lessons into practice through civic engagement projects.

This semester, they are working with Hands On Sumner and the United Way on “Sumner Students Give Back,” an effort to address a practical challenge: connecting students who want to volunteer with nonprofit organizations that need their help.

Their solution is a website where local organizations can post volunteer opportunities and students throughout Sumner County can find ways to serve.

In the aviation program, learning takes yet another form.

Students enter the program as juniors and progress through a four-course dual enrollment sequence that continues into their senior year.

They study subjects including aviation weather and aviation law and regulation, then spend Fridays receiving guided practice using flight simulators.

At the Innovation Center, each program looks different, but the approach is similar.

Students are provided with knowledge and then the opportunities to apply it, whether that means developing a product, managing a project, solving a community need, or exploring the realities of a potential career.

And along the way, something else is happening.

Students from high schools across Sumner County who might never have known one another are finding themselves working side by side, brought together by shared interests and ideas.

“It’s a beautiful thing to see students from all over the county be able to come together and come here and work together with students they may never have met before if they hadn’t been here,” Allen said.

The Innovation Center itself began with a concept, an innovation, if you will. Basically, an idea about what a building could become.

The property was previously associated with a data center company operated by the Smith family. Allen said that after Carolyn Smith passed away, the family wanted the property to serve an educational purpose.

Sumner County Schools took occupancy of the building on Aug. 1, 2025, and welcomed its first students in January 2026 with three dual enrollment courses.

This school year marks its first full year of programming.

For Allen, who has spent approximately 16 years working in career education within Sumner County Schools, the center brings together many aspects of a career spent helping students prepare for their own.

She has served as a teacher, CTE assistant principal, and district career and technical education coordinator before becoming the Innovation Center's program director.

“It’s the best of school administration,” Allen said, “and I get to see these kids create amazing things that help them prepare for their careers.”

Soon, Allen and the Innovation Center staff will begin visiting Sumner County high schools to introduce another group of students to the opportunities available for the coming school year.

Some may arrive with a career already mapped out. Others may simply have an interest, a question, or an idea they want to explore.

What they find at the Innovation Center is an opportunity to do more than learn about that idea.

They can test it. Build it. Change it when it doesn't work. Collaborate with someone who sees the problem differently.

And, perhaps most importantly, learn that the first answer doesn't always have to be the final one.

Because preparing students for the future isn't only about teaching them what is already known. Sometimes, it's about giving them the confidence and the tools to imagine what could come next.