FRIDAY PLENARY SPEAKER

Richard Detweiler

Managing Director, HigherEdImpact.org

Building a Stronger Bridge to the Future – for General Ed and Our Students

While we have long believed in the value of a liberal education, this era’s unrelenting challenges and emphasis on specialization has often left general education on the defensive, unable to make a convincing case for the power of what we do. Adopting an ecological view of higher education – understanding both its content and specific aspects of the context within which it occurs – opens a new and more accurate way of assessing the impact of the educational experience. Indeed, research data documents that there are a number of essential practices of liberal education – some obvious and some invisible or unappreciated – which significantly relate to adult lives of success as well as personal and social impact. By embracing this ecological approach and focusing our priorities we have a fresh opportunity to not only strengthen general education but to infect the full educational experience with the demonstrated power of liberal education on our graduates’ futures.

Biography

Dr. Detweiler is the author of The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry, and Accomplishment (The MIT Press, 2021). A social psychologist with a PhD from Princeton University, he is managing director of HigherEdImpact.org, president emeritus of the Great Lakes Colleges Association and of Hartwick College, founder of The Global Liberal Arts Alliance, and a foundation fellow at Oxford University’s Harris Manchester College. Previously he has been vice president and professor of psychology at Drew University, founding dean of the Frye Leadership Institute at Emory University, interim president of the Council on Library and Information Resources, and Peace Corps volunteer and trainer. A frequent invited speaker and broadly published, his service has included college trusteeship and board membership on numerous higher education organizations.

SATURDAY PLENARY SPEAKER

Anne-Marie Fannon

Director, Work-Learn Institute
University of Waterloo
Ontario

Empowering Future-ready Graduates through Work-integrated Learning

Biography

Anne-Marie Fannon, a passionate advocate for work-integrated learning (WIL), is the Director of the Work-Learn Institute at the University of Waterloo. In this role, she sets the research and innovation agenda for the Work-Learn team.  Anne-Marie is passionate about leveraging Work-Learn’s research insights to inform the practice and pedagogy of WIL.  For the last ten years, Anne-Marie was director of Work-Integrated Learning Programs at the University of Waterloo. In this role, she oversaw the development and delivery of curriculum that supported students in a variety of work-integrated learning opportunities including the new (WE) Accelerate program, the EDGE program and the WatPD courses.

With close to 15 years of experience in work-integrated learning, she has led WIL development and enhancement locally, nationally and internationally.  Her focus is on building scalable and sustainable WIL ecosystems that benefit partners, students and higher education institutions. Anne-Marie is actively engaged with Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning (CEWIL) Canada and serves as co-chair of CEWIL’s Government and External Relations Committee.   She was president of the association in 2016/2017 during which time she led the association through an expansion of its mandate from co-op to work-integrated learning.

The Work-Learn Institute, at the internationally renowned University of Waterloo in Canada, has developed the Future Ready Talent Framework. This framework is embedding important skills and lifelong learning mindset that are critical in the future of work.

This page updated July 28, 2024