Creating Wicked Students: Rethinking Higher Education in Chaotic Times
This exciting instance of the TeLEd Monthly Event Series will feature Paul Hanstedt, one of the leading figures in thinking about the purpose of higher education being about developing students into being better people. After more than two decades as a classroom instructor, Paul Hanstedt was recently appointed as the Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Innovation at the University of Minnesota Rochester. He is the recipient of multiple teaching awards and has authored several books, including GENERAL EDUCATION ESSENTIALS (now in its second edition) and CREATING WICKED STUDENTS. He has worked with dozens of universities on four continents to support curricular and pedagogical reform and innovation, including a Fulbright year in Hong Kong. Most recently, he was a contributing editor to The Teaching Professor, and the recipient of the Association for General and Liberal Studies’ 2023 Award for National Leadership in General and Liberal Education.
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Certainly, students need content and skills to engage with the world. But at a time when we’re faced with unprecedented challenges so large that they break the system—every system—what else is necessary? This talk explores the “wicked problems” our students will face upon graduation, issues that are dynamic, shifting, resistant to simple solutions. What does the age of COVID tell us about how we need to rethink higher ed at every level, from institutional structures all the way down to the papers we assign and the questions we ask on exams? What, finally, do we need to do if we’re to develop graduates who have the abilities—and the motivations—to take thoughtful risks as they tackle the complicated problems of a dynamic world?