Topic: The Educational Imperatives of the Grand Challenges
Location: Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
April 21, 2010
Confirmed Speakers:
Clayton ChristensenRobert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Clayton M. Christensen is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation and growth. Christensen is the bestselling author of five books, including his seminal work The Innovator's Dilemma (1997) which received the Global Business Book Award for the best business book of the year, The Innovator’s Solution (2003), and Seeing What’s Next (2004). Recently, Christensen has focused the lens of disruptive innovation on social issues such as education and health care. Disrupting Class (2008) looks at the root causes of why schools struggle and offers solutions, while The Innovator's Prescription (2009) examines how to fix our healthcare system. Christensen is an experienced entrepreneur, having started three successful companies.
Paul Romer Senior Fellow
Stanford Center for International Development
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University
Paul Romer is building an “economics of ideas” that extends and brings new optimism to the traditional economics of scarce objects. He is best known as the lead developer of New Growth Theory, which shows how societies can speed up the discovery and implementation of new technologies—essentially, ideas about how objects interact. However, to address the big problems we’ll face this century—violence and insecurity, harm to the environment, and global poverty—new technologies will not be enough. His current focus is on mechanisms that can speed up the discovery and implementation of new rules, norms, and laws—ideas about how people interact. For his work on the economics of ideas, Romer was named one of America’s 25 most influential people by TIME magazine (1997), elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000), and awarded the Horst Claus Recktenwald Prize in Economics (2002). He received his PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. In addition to his career in teaching and research, Romer founded Aplia, Inc., which develops and applies technologies to improve student learning. Aplia, which is now part of Cengage Learning, grew out of Romer’s conviction that it is possible to use our understanding of the economics of ideas to raise productivity in education.
Invited Speakers:
- Amy B. Smith, Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Aneesh Paul Chopra, Chief Technology Officer and Associate Director for Technology, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy
Program Description:
On Wednesday, April 21, 2010, Babson College, Olin College of Engineering and Wellesley College will co-sponsor a regional summit on the Educational Imperatives of the Grand Challenges, a critical grouping of problems that must be addressed in order to maintain our quality of life and ensure a sustainable future.
This summit will bring together educators from all fields for an interdisciplinary discussion around effecting change in educational systems to respond to the needs posed by the grand challenges. These problems are inherently interdisciplinary and global, and will require unprecedented levels of holistic, systems approaches that integrate science and technology with business, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, and even religion. As a result, new educational approaches are needed that improve the integration of these disciplines and bring them to bear on important, complex problems of our time.
The success of this event requires representation of those in engineering, science, social sciences, education, business, arts and humanities, and other fields key to preparing the next generation of leaders.
More information:
For more information, please contact Joseph Hunter, Asst. VP for External Relations and Director of Communication at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering at 781-292-2255 or grandchallenges@olin.edu.
