Professor Ádám Galambos spearheaded bringing a TEDx event to the Lawrence University campus this Friday, and I have been along for the ride. The theme is Reimagining the Liberal Education, and we have some impressive people from around the country coming in to re-imagine things with us. The university’s TEDx Lawrence site will contain the live web feed. The Appleton Post Crescent posted a story Wednesday, and here’s what Ádám had to say:
Liberal education has a great deal to contribute to society. It’s up to us to figure out how we’re going to be a part of creating our future.
I hope this will result not just in intellectual exchange, although that’s really important, but also action, taking those new ideas to change in the world.
Professor Scott Corry will be featured on a Post-Crescent webcast tomorrow as well! (Link here)
Incoming Randolph College President, Bradley W. Bateman, will be on hand talk about the role of advising at liberal arts colleges. This is a timely piece given that advising at large universities came under fire earlier this week. Also, coincidentally enough, President Bateman was my undergraduate advisor once upon a time, though I don’t recall him ever suggesting that I should go to graduate school and become a professor (?).
One of the marquee speakers is Jeff Selingo of the Chronicle of Higher Education and author of the about-to-be-released College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What it Means for Students. That talk is set for 9:35 a.m. Friday. We are also very excited to have Andy Chan from Wake Forest coming in to talk about links between education and career development. And, one of the co-founders of Coursera, Daphne Koller from Stanford, will join us via video feed to tell us about the MOOCs.
Wow!
LU has a strong presence as well, with President Beck and Dean Pertl sharing their visions of the future. The tireless Bob Perille (’80), founder and champion of of the Lawrence Scholars programs, will be on hand to talk about (you guessed it) the Lawrence Scholars programs. Rick Davis (’90) from George Mason will invoke the role of the liberal arts in fomenting collaboration and Jennifer Herek (’90) will be on hand to talk about spreading the liberal arts to technical education in Europe.
In addition, Jenny Kehl from UW-Milwaukee will be on hand to talk about how central collaboration and interdisciplinary work will be to tackling some of our toughest environmental issues.
All TEDx events showcase videos from TED events, and as part of that we will be watching the Erik Brynjolfsson video that Professor Finkler discussed in a previous post.
It should be a good one. Professor Brandenberger and I were co-organizers, and fortunately John handled some of the more delicate interpersonal matters. We’re interested in seeing how this goes over. If you have a few minutes, tune in to the webcast and let us know what you think. Here is that link.
