Cathy Davidson
Cathy N. Davidson joined the Graduate Center, City University of New York, in July 2014 as Distinguished Professor in the PhD Program in English and Director of The Futures Initiative. In 2002 she cofounded the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaborator (hastac.org), a 14,000 member network dedicated to “Changing the Way We Teach and Learn.” A distinguished scholar of the history of technology, Davidson was appointed to the National Humanities Council by President Obama in 2010. In 2012, she was the first educator to be invited to join the Board of Directors of Mozilla, and was named “Educator of the Year,” along with HASTAC’s cofounder David Theo Goldberg, by the World Technology Network. She has published more than twenty books, mostly on the historical and cultural impact of new technologies, most recently Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. She is currently working on a book on innovation, equity, and the future of higher education for Basic Books.
More info: http://www.cathydavidson.com/about/media-kit/
Keynote Abstract
Changing Higher Education from the Classroom Up
DESCRIPTION: In “Changing Higher Education from the Classroom Up”leading educational innovator Cathy N. Davidson argues that it is time to reconsider the Industrial Age origins of our system of higher education and to begin to envision new forms of peer learning and collaborative leadership that work better for the world we live in now. She argues that, as educators, we can begin, today, to shift the paradigms for learning within our own classrooms. By modeling new modes of thinking, we can prepare our students for the digital world and workplace and inspire the crucial process of institutional transformation. We can also begin to model a new process of institutional change which begins in pedagogical theory and practice and then moves outward to curricular reform, new ideas about assessment, a more engaged relationship between the public and universities, and a connection between early age, K-12 education and higher education. Finally, Davidson advocates on behalf of a new interactive, engaged definition of learning and expertise that must be embraced by society, including those corporate interests that insist on educational reform but continue with employment practices modeled on early 20th century paradigms.
twitter: @cathyndavidson
website: http://cathydavidson.com