Lecturer to speak on future of higher education
LAWRENCE — David Krakauer, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, will deliver a lecture titled “The Future of the University” at 8 p.m. today, April 17, at The Commons. Krakauer will then participate in a panel discussion that poses the challenge Dare to Design the University of the Future. That event will be at 10 a.m. Friday, April 18.
As director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, a transdisciplinary research institute at the University of Wisconsin, Krakauer has been outspoken about the need for reconceiving the university of the 21st century. An evolutionary theorist and professor of genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Krakauer espouses an experimental approach to blending scientific approaches with those of other disciplines in an effort to generate partnerships that are able to approach problems from multiple perspectives.
Tonight’s lecture will address the challenges inherent in the modern model of the university and pose ideas for change to meet the needs of a society that is advancing technologically and changing economically. Krakauer will discuss the value of truly interdisciplinary work as he relates some of his attempts to address these challenges at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery.
Friday’s panel discussion will be moderated by Sara Thomas Rosen, senior vice provost for Academic Affairs, and will feature Richard De George, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Russian & East European Studies and Business Administration; Mabel Rice, Fred and Virginia Merrill Distinguished Professor of Advanced Studies, Speech-Language-Hearing; and Lisa Wolf Wendel, professor of higher education and coordinator of the Higher Education Master’s Degree Program in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies.
Krakauer is a graduate of the University of London and Oxford University. He has served as a visiting professor at Princeton University and became a faculty chair at the Santa Fe Insitute in 2009. Krakauer has been a visiting fellow at the Genomics Frontiers Institute at the University of Pennsylvania and a Sage Fellow at the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored many mainstream articles, podcasts and videos, and with credit to his nontraditional approach to collaboration and science, he was named among Wired UK’s 2012 Smart List as one of 50 people “who will change the world.”
Both events are free and open to the public.