The US education trend data are not pretty. The challenges around college completion in particular are real and growing. However, an optimist might look at this opportunity and take heart in the rising embrace of innovative technologies, creative techniques, and transformative models and say there is hope on the horizon. In this presentation we’ll outline the challenges and explore the opportunities we’ll face together in the education world on the road ahead.

Mark David Milliron serves as the deputy director for postsecondary improvement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, leading efforts to increase student success in the US postsecondary education sector. He is an award-winning leader, author, speaker, and consultant well known for exploring leadership development, future trends, learning strategies, and the human side of technology change.

Milliron founded and served as CEO for the private consulting and service group, Catalyze Learning International (CLI). In addition, he previously served as an Endowed Fellow, Senior Lecturer, and Director of the National Institute of Staff and Organizational Development in the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin; Vice President for Education and Medical Practice with SAS, the world's largest private software company; and President and CEO of the League for Innovation in the Community College

While teaching at Arizona State, Milliron received the International Communication Association's Teaching Excellence Award. More recently, the University of Texas at Austin's College of Education honored him as a Distinguished Graduate for his service to the education field. In 2005, PBS named Milliron the recipient of its annual O'Banion Prize for transformational work in support of teaching and learning. And in 2007, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) presented Milliron with its National Leadership Award for his outstanding accomplishments, contributions, and leadership.

Follow the blog he authors and moderates: Catalytic Conversations Blog

Also, visit www.scup.org/page/annualconf/45/Plenary/Monday/Resources to explore the books and resources referenced in the presentation.

Proceedings for this session were not shared.

There is much ado today about social media and the changing landscape of human interaction brought on by the revolution in network-based communications. No doubt this revolution is powerful, far-reaching, and impacts our daily lives in direct and tangible ways. What is not so evident is the revolution quietly occurring in the way buildings are being conceived, a revolution that will impact the way we plan, design, implement, and manage the campus facilities portfolio forever. Technologies such as building information modeling, cloud computing, mesh networks, and digital media are being realized in new ways to optimize energy consumption, usage efficiencies, user comfort, security, and human communication. At what point do buildings become self-aware? When do they inter-operate? And how might we plan for the emerging intelligent campus? This presentation will take a look over the horizon of possibilities. Mark Valenti is an expert in digital media technologies, architectural acoustics, psychoacoustics, and market trends in the multimedia industry. He understands the engineering behind designing truly rich classroom learning environments, blended with the online tools that students and instructors love. 

There are no proceedings for this session as there was no visual component.

Jerome Ringo became National President of the Apollo Alliance in 2005 as a dedicated champion of environmental justice and vocal advocate of clean energy. He has first hand experience of the challenges we face after working for more than 20 years in Louisiana’s petrochemical industry.His career include years in drilling and offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as process operations in the refining industry. More than half of that time was spent as an active union member working with his fellow members to secure a safe work environment and quality jobs. Louisiana’s petrochemical industry focuses on the production of gasoline, rocket fuel, and plastics – many of which contain cancer causing chemicals. As he began observing the negative impacts of the industry’s pollution on local communities – primarily poor, minority communities – Jerome began organizing community environmental justice groups.

Jerome’s experience organizing environmental and labor communities and his drive to further diversify the environmental movement bridges many of Apollo’s partners to create a broad based coalition to provide real solutions for our energy crisis. In 1996, Ringo was elected to serve on the National Wildlife Federation board of directors and, in 2005, Jerome became the chair of the board. In so doing, he also became the first African American to head a major conservation organization. Jerome was the United States’ only black delegate at the 1998 Global Warming Treaty Negotiations in Kyoto, Japan, and represented the National Wildlife Federation at the COP 15 talks in Copenhagan, Denmark. He also served as a representative at the United Nations’ conference on sustainable development in 1999. Jerome inspires audiences around the world to create a new clean energy economy.

Some of his most notable speaking appearances include: the Montreal Climate Summit in 2006, the United Nations African Climate Conference in Nairobi, Kenya in 2006, the Kyoto Plus Conference in Berlin Germany in 2007, and the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver Colorado.

In 2006, Jerome was a McCloskey Fellow and Associate Research Scholar at Yale University; in 2008, he was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren School of the Environment. Jerome is co-author of Diversity and the Future of the U.S. Environmental Movement (published in 2007) and The Green Festival Reader (published in 2008.)