Speaking Engagements This Winter

This past week I met some amazing professors from the Ivy Tech Community College system. As the speaker for the statewide Academy for Instructional Excellence I had the privilege of meeting 46 of Indiana’s top community college professors. It dawned on me that I was with 46 people who met the basic qualification of Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers.” They had already spent over 10,000 hours teaching. A few days later I was in Houston at the National Conference for Students in Transition (hosted by USC). Along with John Gardner, Stuart Hunter and others, we were asked to speak on our recent Jossey-Bass book, Helping Sophomores Succeed. I was amazed at the turnout for such a discussion. My interest is the connection between the great questions about the human condition and the search among sophomores for their sense of purpose. Purpose-Guided Education continues to be a guiding interest for much of my work. I was blessed while in Houston to hear both Phil Gardner (MSU, Director of C.E.R.I.) and Deborah Santiago (co-founder of Excelencia in Education). Both are powerful speakers, and spoke at National Conversations for us in October. Their bios are there. This week I’ll be at the SBL/ANE session to hear Scott Carroll, and represent the Green Scholars Initiative (which he’ll be discussing). We will then travel to Baylor (Waco, TX) to present on the s