In 2011, the New American Colleges and Universities established a national award to honor the legacy of Ernest L. Boyer by recognizing an individual whose achievements in higher education exemplify Boyer's quest for connecting theory to practice and thought to action, in and out of the classroom. The 2014 Boyer Award was presented to Edward L. Ayers at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities. This article was adapted from the acceptance address given by the author on that occasion. The author discusses how those who care about institutions as well as disciplines can take steps to make our schools more exciting, productive, and efficient by aligning our policies so that people who want to experiment with digital technologies can do so. The threads of scholarship, teaching, and community can be woven together more tightly than even Ernest Boyer could have imagined if we encourage our faculty, chairs, and deans, our librarians and our technology leaders--and ourselves, whatever role we may play--to take advantage of the new opportunities all around us. We can find new coherence and purpose in the very forces that threaten to disrupt and displace us. To build a future we want to live in, we must ensure the survival of the sustaining spirit of scholarship.