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The Emotional Rescue of Education

Looking to make change in your school? Check out this series of materials created by Big Beacon founder, Dave Goldberg: Lesson 1: The Emotional Rescue of Education The Emotional Rescue of Education from David E. Goldberg  

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Art for Engineers: Encouraging More Whole-Brain Thinking

Post contributed by Stuart G. Walesh, Ph.D., P.E. The human brain’s left and right hemispheres have markedly different capabilities. The left hemisphere exhibits valuable verbal, analytic, logical, and linear characteristics while the right hemisphere offers equally powerful nonverbal, emotional, intuitive, spatial, and holistic features. Betty Edwards, in her 1999 book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, says this…

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Guiding Change: Relationships Foster Movements

Post contributed by Dr. Bryan Boulanger When I was little my father used to tell me, “If you want to know what you look like, look in the mirror. If you want to know who you are, look at your friends.” As I’ve grown older and my wife and I have had our own children, I’ve added “If you want…

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“Big Boys Don’t Cry:” An Obstacle to Educational Transformation

The E-Word and Educational Transformation When Mark Somerville and I are were working on A Whole New Engineer: The Coming Revolution in Engineering Education one of the hardest things to acknowledge was the degree to which the transformation of education for the 21st century was profoundly emotional at the level of individuals and profoundly cultural at the level of organizations.  Fairly early in our work together (2008…

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#BigBeacon Twitter Chat, Wed, 4 March, 8pm ET w/ Cohosts @deg511 & @AlanJSnyder

Cohosts @AlanJSnyder (Alan J. Snyder) and @deg511 (Dave Goldberg) are pleased to announce a twitter chat on Designing Change Initiatives for Student & Faculty Engagement & Unleashing.  The following are some of the Qs explored in the chat: What aspects of physical plant encourage the formation of a special micro-culture separate from traditional campus culture? What emotional shifts are necessary for…

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Launch Date Fixed: A Whole New Engineer, coming October 1, 2014

A Whole New Engineering is Scheduled Mark Somerville at Olin College and I have been working since 2012 on a book about transformation in engineering education.  The book is entitled A Whole New Engineer: The Coming Revolution in Engineering Education.  We are in the final stages of editing and production, and the book is now scheduled to be released t 1…

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Twitter Chat: Empathy, Intuition and other Engineering tools

I was recently asked to write an open letter giving some advice to the class of graduating engineers this year. You can check out my whole letter here, but I'll share a snippet that got me thinking about what engineering education (mostly) isn't and what it could be:   You'll need your creativity and imagination every bit as much as…

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Twitter Chat: Why Engineers Should Adopt an Artistic Mindset

  Tomorrow, October 16th 2013, at 8 pm EST, we'll join Jeff Shelton, aka 'Sheltoneer', a mechanical/industrial engineer with a passion for telling the lesser-known stories of the engineering profession and in improving engineering education, on the #BigBeacon twitter chat to hear why he believes that engineers would benefit from understanding or even adopting the skills and mindset of an…

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A Whole New Engineer (The Book) is Coming

This week I spent time at Olin College in Needham, MA with my co-author, Mark Somerville, and collaborating writer, Catherine Whitney as we worked toward a first full draft manuscript for a new book,  A Whole New Engineer: A Surprising Emotional Journey.  We've been working on the book for almost a year and a half, and crafting the stories together…

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