Note to Editors: Reporters or photographers interested in attending the May 13 Discovery Learning Conference are asked to call Carol Rowe at (303) 492-7426 to make arrangements. The conference is not open to the general public.
As part of the events surrounding the groundbreaking for the Discovery Learning Center, the College of Engineering and Applied Science will host a national conference on the new learning model and partnerships with industry.
About 70 invited participants will engage in discussions on discovery learning, intellectual property and industry partnerships at the May 13 conference. The conference will be at the college聮s Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory on the east side of the Engineering Center at Regent Drive and Colorado Avenue.
Colorado Secretary of Technology Marc Holtzman will open the conference with engineering Dean Ross Corotis.
Other participants will include Bud Wonsiewicz, senior vice president and chief technology officer of MediaOne Group; Larry Leifer, director of the Stanford Learning Laboratory and Center for Design Research; Nora Sabelli, senior program director for the National Science Foundation; and Dale Hatfield, chief of the Office of Engineering and Techology, Federal Communications Commission.
Peter Senge, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the widely acclaimed book, "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization," also will make a presentation. (A complete schedule and list of panelists is attached.)
The conference will provide a setting for faculty and industry representatives to discuss new ways of facilitating student learning in the 21st century.
"The vertical integration of students, faculty and industry representatives on collaborative teams that is part of the college聮s Discovery Learning philosophy, will create new kinds of learning communities among people with different backgrounds," said Enid Ablowitz, assistant dean for advancement and co-organizer of the conference.
"At the same time, learning, teaching, working and collaborating are becoming lifelong pursuits and will need to be supported by new kinds of institutions, taking full advantage of technological advances."
Intellectual property rights and the challenges inherent in efforts to create new learning models will be the topic of a second panel.
"For a university to foster discovery learning, the core value of shared knowledge is a defining principle," Ablowitz said. "However, when industry provides the real-world problems that form the basis for the applied research, there may be a desire to maintain proprietary control. This panel will look at legal frameworks to address the new models for partnerships."
A third panel will discuss academic and industry values, with the goal of finding shared values that can be the blueprint for the new discovery-based learning initiative.