Posts under ‘higher education’

Before you pony up $50,000 or more for an MBA degree, it makes sense to check out what you can expect back for your investment. Recession begs us to rethink business schools, and to consider if the value of degrees have plummeted along with home prices and salaries. As Joe Gerstandt reminds us we need [...]

Written By Ellen Weber, PhD and Robyn McMaster, PhD
Higher Education and Brain Based Benefits

Challenges of Change
Renewal is to the university community today what Renaissance was to the Middle Ages. Both encompass a resurgence of learning. Both tap into more potential from the human brain. To reconfigure university teaching for a rebirth [...]

Consider current higher education communities in crisis, where one dean said, We pretend to teach them, they pretend to learn. Have you seen the disconnect between learning and leading change for the 21st Century?
Yet normal brain activity is now observable to show how humans acquire and use knowledge. How will neuro discoveries impact higher [...]

What makes MITA renewal so different from other top leadership and learning improvement models?

Thanks to Dr. Robyn McMaster’s masterful handiwork with cameras and talented online solutions, we’re able to carry on the MITA renewal conversation I’d been looking forward to for some time. Hope you’ll jump in to share your renewal stories, so we can [...]

What would it take to renew university learning and draw more brainpower from learners and leaders? We know adult intelligence improves – from MDs such as Dan Siegel, Director of  Mindsight Inst at UCLA School of Medicine, who draws on recent science to harness the brain’s circuitry. The results?
Research offers increased brainpower opportunities that [...]

When you rev up mental equipment daily to either sink or swim, you discover how creativity and curiosity will trump criticism and intimidation. How then can you experience mental power in settings where no brain is left behind?
One friend and fellow leader Dave Caiazza, put it this way:

Work against the dangerous twins of jealousy and [...]

To renew with the brain in mind is to approach teens and teaching with new vision, diverse tools, and higher expectations for all:

Teens bring unique knowledge to technology and renewal both recognizes and uses their technical skills. (Braden Husdal in Teaching starts from Brain Down)
Repetition is less effective for teens than teaching math [...]

Imagine a climate of peace, with humility that inspires, and people who recognize talents, and you’ve just begun to awaken intrapersonal intelligence. Build healthy relationships that shape character, and your brain cultivates new neuron pathways toward spirit and highest values such as caring in your character and in others. Or trust that turned LA’s most [...]

The New Haven Fire Department destroyed test results of white firefighters who scored higher than African Americans to allow promotions among black firefighters. This troublesome case, and research proofs that high stakes tests don’t work,  raises the question How can tests garner more intelligence-fair results?

This serious case also opens an opportunity to identify the [...]

Some insist that tenure’s the way expert faculty ensure free speech without fear of losing jobs. Others protest that tenure keeps ineffective people and blocks brainpower for new initiatives. With more campuses being sued, and relevancy questioned it may be time to take another look and what learners expect and what classes offer.
Today, for instance [...]

Imagine reinvigorated secondary schools or universities, designed with each learner’s brain in mind. It’s time for the death of education to become the dawn of learning. Time for learning renewal to reinvent your entire community! If you see past broken systems, or catch a glimpse of talented people ahead, you’ve already spotted the brain’s plasticity [...]

Have you experienced mental power that bubbles over in circles where no brain is left behind? Interactive sessions where creativity trumps criticism, and diversity’s the handmaiden of dignity and innovative virtue?
If so, would you agree that brilliant solutions tend to flow from pools just outside of the prevailing thought – where:

1. No Brain Left [...]

The mark of a successful secondary school is motivated teens achieving at the peaks. Does it happen in your community?
This summer launches Rochester’s first MITA Brain Institute – custom designed for secondary faculty, and poised to reconfigure learning – with the brain in mind.
Participants will create curriculum together to jumpstart teen brains for higher motivation [...]

Read vision statements  that affirm  secondary and university renewal, and you’ll spot innovative learning opportunities for all. Observe classes in these same schools, though, and practical results appear far less impressive. Have you noticed that a school’s intent, and its classroom practices too often differ when it comes to renewed learning and assessment opportunities for [...]

Each step to renew your workplace ethically and with the brain in mind – casts lights on mental barriers that prevent change in stagnant organizations. How so?
To rethink old approaches is also to take a stand against Hebbian hardwired thought that defaults back to ruts and routines.
To upgrade motivation and achievement at secondary or higher [...]

When entire systems such as finances, health care or higher education, break down, corrupt and confound intelligent people, it’s time to power up the brain and reboot ethical practices to simplify. How so?
Beyond the clutter of financial policies, written to confuse honest tax payers, lies opportunity for a simply stated and ethical economy. Who will [...]

College rankings continue to nudge their way up, while excellence plummets at alarming rates. How so?
If James Cote and Anton Allahar got it right in Ivory Tower Blues, the university really is in crisis, and other leaders say its bubble is about to burst. What a great opportunity awaits higher education leaders to bring [...]

At a university debate on the brain’s role in education, the dean asked: Why bring the brain into learning, when higher education already has traditions and a proven history? How would you have responded?
Looking back, I likely should have told about my own dream that leaders and learners can  prosper more by tapping into extravagant [...]

Sat through meetings lately where one person only talks? If so, you’ll be interested to know why your brain bristles, spits and stalls.
While many still lecture and demand rote responses in paper-pencil-tests, faculty who know research on retention, tend to facilitate brainpower from wider circles for broader solutions. Have you seen it?
Brain based chats are [...]

Some  university faculty add value to the learning process. Others clearly do not. That’s not new. But what separates good faculty from those who fail the learning process?
New neuro-discoveries changed playing fields yet some faculty cling to sage-on-the-stage mentality. Poor faculty see their role to lecture and test for facts that stick through rote. [...]