Big Learning Event seeks your big ideas for speakers

Some 350 faculty, staff, students and community members came together earlier this year for the first Big Learning Event. The intention of the event was to encourage cross-disciplinary listening and conversations to develop game-changing ideas for the future. 

In addition to the excitement of talking with colleagues old and new, the BLE brought together some of the country’s brightest minds from disparate disciplines to help spark big ideas.

Psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; Richard J. Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at UW–Madison; Derrick Pitts, astronomer and director of the Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia; writer and management consultant Meg Wheatley; Nathan Wolfe, virus hunter and professor and director of the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative at Stanford University; and social pioneer, artist and former professor of painting and art history Lily Yeh were the basis for the “mosh pit of minds.”

Participants at the BLE witnessed the power of unbridled big thinking. Great ideas can come from asking interesting questions and making connections with people who are completely different from you.

The BLE Planning Team has issued a call for speaker suggestions for the next BLE. Have you been impressed with someone’s work? Are there leaders in your discipline that more people should hear? Is someone doing groundbreaking/fascinating/quirky work we can all learn from? Who has inspired you?

The team will sift and winnow through the nominations, and check on their availability and suitability for the event. The goal is to have the speakers selected and confirmed in spring 2012; the next BLE will be held in spring 2013.

To make a suggestion(s), click here.

– Gwen Evans