Plenary Sessions

Colleges and universities have proven remarkably resilient in the face of persistent attempts to change their deep architecture – the habits, processes, and systems that make them behave the way they do.  This inner culture, however, is precisely what has to change and what integrated planning seeks to change, if our work is to produce significantly better results. Drawing on a socio-cultural history of higher education in the west, Dr. Shugart will take us on a cultural tour of the essential DNA of higher education, with architectural touch points, and describe how strategy and planning can engage cultural change.

Sanford “Sandy” Shugart is the president of Valencia College, one of the nation’s largest and most celebrated two-year colleges. The college serves over 58,000 credit students and more than 11,000 continuing professional education students annually.

Valencia is widely known for its academic excellence, Learning Centered Initiative, and high rates of graduation. More than 50 percent graduate or transfer within three years of entering college, compared to under 40 percent for community colleges nationally. Valencia’s job placement rate is 95 percent—one of the highest in the United States, and it has one the most productive transfer program in the country working in partnership with the University of Central Florida.

Last December Valencia was named the inaugural winner of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. This is the first national recognition of extraordinary accomplishments at individual community colleges. The Prize celebrates top performers to elevate the community college sector nationwide, and help other institutions understand how to improve outcomes for the seven million students—nearly half of all undergraduates in post-secondary education are working toward degrees and certificates in community colleges.

D. Shugart came to Valencia after serving as president of North Harris College in Texas, and Vice President of the North Carolina Community College System. He received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

New! Valencia College just received a sustainability award for their waste minimization efforts through the 2012 Recycle Mania Tournament. Learn more!      

From Khan Academy to TED talks, Udacity, Edx and Coursera to badges and portfolios, we're witnessing an unprecedented disruption in higher education led by innovations like video, peer-led learning, and massively open online courses. The continuing transformation of higher education, with the twin pressures of economics and technological innovation, will challenge colleges and universities to find new efficiencies and specialization, embrace and incorporate a student's personal learning networks and paths, blend experiential and digital approaches, and adopt free and open-source educational resources. The dialogue is an evolving one, but Kamenetz will share her initial findings and asks that you consider the impact of tuition and student loans, as well as technology and social media, on higher education.

Kamenetz is bringing an entirely unexpected perspective on the future of knowledge, talent, and innovation. An educational futurist and the rare speaker on issues facing Millennials (while actually belonging to this generation), she delivers audiences core insights into change, technology, and talent.

Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Village Voice, her feature series later became a highly regarded book, titled Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young. Written when she was just 24, Generation Debt (Riverhead Books, 2006) drew national media attention and sparked passionate online debate with its argument that young people are facing unique and unprecedented economic challenges. Her latest book, DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education (Chelsea Green, 2010), tells the story of how technology is disrupting one of the most tradition-bound industries in the country, and no industry is safe.TheEdupunk's Guide to a DIY Credential, which is funded by the Gates Foundation, is available for free download now.

Listen to what Wesch
will be talking about.

New media and technology present us with an overwhelming bounty of tools for connection, creativity, collaboration, and knowledge creation—a true "Age of Whatever" where anything seems possible. But any enthusiasm about these remarkable possibilities is immediately tempered by that other "Age of Whatever"—an age in which people feel increasingly disconnected, disempowered, tuned out, and alienated. What is needed more than ever is to inspire our students to wonder, to nurture their appetite for curiosity, exploration, and contemplation, and to help them attain an insatiable appetite to ask and pursue big, authentic, and relevant questions so that they can harness and leverage the bounty of possibility all around us. We need to rediscover the "end" or purpose of wonder to stave off the historical end of wonder. No institution could be more central to this revitalization of wonder than our universities, our historical hubs for the free exchange of ideas and innovations. Yet recent studies show that key hallmarks of wonder such as academic motivation, openness to others, and the desire to contribute to art and science actually decrease while attending college. This presentation will explore what we are doing wrong, and what we are doing right, as we try to bring wonder back to our students and communities.

Dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the effects of new media on society and culture. After two years studying the implications of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed over 20 million times, translated in over 20 languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He also has won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie US Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

Wesch recently received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad de San Martin de Porres, Peru's largest university. Read about it HERE.