Summer 2009 Workshops   --    July 1st and August 25th
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, Massachusetts, USA

The Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, MA will be hosting two workshops this summer for faculty members and academic leaders interested in catalyzing curricular change on their home campuses. These workshops build on a number of activities including:

  • the Grand Challenge Summit at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering (co-hosted by USC's Vitterbi School and Olin College) in March 2009 and the subsequent NAE Grand Challenge Scholars Program (http://grandchallengescholars.org)

  • the Engineer of the Future 2.0 Conference hosted at Olin (in conjunction with UIUC/iFoundry) in April 2009 and its launch of APIE2 (http://apie2.org/)

  • the NAE/Purdue Engineering Leaders Symposium in June 2009, focusing on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to create effective curricular innovations

As a part of our effort to build and sustain the momentum created by these and similar events, Olin will host two one-day workshops this summer. We hope that you will consider joining us.

On Wednesday, July 1, from 9am-3pm, we will host a workshop for Change Agents -- faculty and administrators who have been engaged in curricular innovations on our own campuses -- to pool our experiences and to plan what might be needed to support further change.  Questions include:

  • What is required to catalyze educational change on campus?  
  • What can be done to create appropriate incentives, climate, etc., and to sustain efforts already underway?  

This workshop is intended as a planning meeting whose outcome will be concrete steps we and others could take in the future to support desired change. Cost is $35 including lunch.

On Tuesday, August 25, from 9am -5pm, we will host a second, complementary workshop to *effect* change:  Given specific desired changes that some of us are currently (interested in) pursuing, this workshop will be more of a working session to help plan/create the specific change.  We especially encourage attendance at this workshop as a team from your institution, bringing a specific current or planned project to work on.  This workshop will be an opportunity to compare notes and pool our wisdom as well as to make concrete progress on our projects. Cost is $50 with included lunch and reception.

Both workshops will be heavily participatory, with the goals of sharing specific skills and techniques as well as producing concrete plans and follow-up activities.  Participants may chose to attend either workshop individually or to attend both.

Register here for the workshop(s) you plan to attend