Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center - IDEA Center

IDEA Center

The IDEA Center was an outgrowth of the UCSD IDEA club formed by UCSD IDEA Club members and co-founders Steve Renner, Eddie Colanter, and Casey Luskin in the summer of 2001, as part of an effort to start IDEA Clubs on other campuses, including high schools.

It describes its goal as:

our primary focus of outreach is to help students found chapters of "IDEA Clubs" at high schools and universities where they can promote intelligent design theory to their fellow students.

The IDEA Center is run by a board of directors and an advisory board. The advisory board consists of the leaders of the intelligent design movement, William A. Dembski, Michael Behe, Phillip E. Johnson, Jay Richards and Mark Hartwig, and provides guidance and support to the board of directors. The IDEA Center board of directors has an unusual concentration of members from the same families serving; of the three founders, two have family members serving as directors, Eddie Colanter and Brit Colanter, and Steve Renner and Lynette Renner. In addition, Ryan Huxley and Stephen Huxley are board members as well. The majority of the advisory board are Fellows of the Discovery Institute, the driving force behind the intelligent design movement, or affiliated with the institute in some way. The Institute has been the primary source of support to the IDEA Center for its entire history. IDEA Center co-founder Casey Luskin after graduating from law school went on to a staff position at the Discovery Institute contributing to its blog, EvolutionNews.org.