EXPLO | Official Update

EXPLO | Official Update

THE EXPLO UPDATE 2017 From the Desk of Moira Kelly, Executive Director + President

Bringing Thinkers and Doers to EXPLO This past summer we threw open the doors to our EXPLO at Yale program by bringing in dozens of speakers and presenters. Joining us were Yale professors including the philosopher and ethicist Shelly Kagan; Barry Nalebuff of the Yale School of Management (co-founder of Honest Tea and an EXPLO Staff alum); neuroscientist and Dean of Yale College, Marvin Chun; and constitutional and criminal law expert, James Forman Jr., (also an EXPLO Staff alum). Also joining us, among many others, were former United States Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power, popular NYU instructor of the Science of Happiness, Dan Lerner, and seven-time Emmy winner Marty Slutsky. These thinkers and doers really added to the richness of the summer and I’m looking forward to expanding this aspect of our program next summer. EXPLO Student Leading Humanitarian Effort in Puerto Rico Sometimes we courageously put aside our own fear and despair to act on behalf of others. This is what 15-year-old alum Salvador Gomez Colon (Emergency Medicine and EXPLO at Salvador spearheaded a remarkable charitable

crowdfunding campaign to help his fellow citizens. His work and cause have been highlighted on CNN. I encourage you to look up Light and Hope for Puerto Rico to learn more about this incredible effort, and perhaps consider helping Salvador in his work to help others. Joining together as a global community, we can make an enormous difference and bring hope to Puerto Rican families. Donations can be made at https://www.generosity.com (keyword search: Light and Hope).

Wellesley) is doing. He and his family are rationing food, living with no running water, and living with only intermittent power. But they know that they are better off than others. Many in Puerto Rico have no electricity and therefore no light and no way to charge cell phones to communicate with others outside of their immediate circle.

EXPLO, Particle Physics, and CERN Some of you may know that Pasi Sahlberg, a renowned international educational policy expert from Finland, is on our curriculum advisory board. One of the many noteworthy things Finland is known for is Rovio — perhaps better known as the company that makes the Angry Birds game. A group of Rovio alums has now launched Lightneer, an ed tech company that has designed a delightful and engaging particle physics game in partnership with CERN (home of the Large Hadron Collider). Thanks to an introduction from Pasi, EXPLO is now partnering with Lightneer and CERN to launch a particle physics course for our EXPLO at Wheaton students in Summer 2018. EXPLO is writing the curriculum, and at the conclusion of the summer we will make the curriculum available to the world in the hopes of igniting more interest in studying the beauty that is physics.

How to Live Wisely with Harvard University Professor Richard Light

This summer I was in the Wheaton student center when I ran into Dick Light who was dropping off his granddaughter for the program (his daughters, Jennifer and Sarah, are also EXPLO alumni). Dick is a distinguished professor at Harvard and launched the ”Reflecting on Your Life” program for Harvard undergraduates, which has now spread to colleges and universities throughout the U.S. (Dick sums it up nicely in a New York Times op-ed, “How to live Wisely.”)

Dick and I got to talking about his work — that undergraduates are wrestling with identifying their core values and making thoughtful decisions not just about making a living, but living a life, and how the two can intersect. We also talked about the alarming numbers of Harvard undergraduates who are suffering from anxiety and depression (not unique to Harvard, but the situation at virtually all highly competitive universities). This led to a conversation about stress, the pressures on young people to achieve, and how to navigate in a world of uncertainty. I suggested that, instead of waiting until college, it might be healthier to begin these conversations and engage in some exploration of the self before students go to college. Dick ran with the idea and recently (quite generously) came over to the Exploration Center to train us on his program. We’re now working together to integrate age-appropriate versions of his work at Yale and Wellesley — and even possibly Wheaton — this coming summer.

EXPLO Studio has been on a tear this past year! EXPLO Studio projects have been popping up all over the place from a STEAM innovation keynote in the state of Maine, to an international educator’s workshop/think tank in Venice, Italy, to a camp serving low income students who attend low performing public schools in Delaware, USA. Currently, we have a year-long Critical Making Foundations course being piloted in two Boston area schools and we plan to make it available to others for the 2018-19 school year. EXPLO Studio: Our R+D Division and Teaching + Learning Lab

of our Studio outreach work is teacher professional development. This past summer we ran an highly successful critical making camp for educators from the U.S., Canada, and Brazil. We had elementary, middle, and high school teachers from a variety of disciplines. We’ll be running another camp next summer and enrollment for that will open later this fall. If you know an educator who might be interested, send them our way!

EXPLO Studio focuses on cultivating creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking through highly engaging projects. Though we are doing lots of outreach through Studio, our summer programs are really benefiting by taking advantage of the incredible projects and work being spun off by Studio. Still, great curriculum is nothing if you don’t have a teacher trained to run with it (this is the area we focus on so strongly at our summer programs). So a key part

Experts Look to EXPLO I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Field Rickards, a dean emeritus from the University of Melbourne who is currently traveling around the world to investigate the future of education. Field met a couple of our folks at the Oppi education innovation festival in Venice this fall and was so intrigued he added us to his itinerary when he landed in Boston. We had a lively chat here at the Exploration Center about curriculum, teacher professional development, curiosity, engagement, and how we’ve forgotten the plot line for schools. It was wonderful to meet a kindred spirit. Field planned to visit Harvard while in Boston after already stopping at Stanford and meeting with OECD education ministers. He will bring his findings back to Australia and tackle country-wide school reform.

New Focus Programs for 2018 While more detailed information is forthcoming, I thought I would give you a sneak peek at the new Focus programs that will launch next summer. At Yale, we will be running a one-week Future of Medicine program, as well as a two-week Psychology +

We are also partnering with Wheaton College to run a two-week Bioengineering for Girls program for grades 9-11 that will include Wheaton faculty teaching lab techniques. We’ve got some terrific partners and advisors from academia and industry including Biogen, SpaceX, Harvard Medical School, MIT, and many more. We’ll be visiting some fascinating biotechnology labs in the Boston/Cambridge area, and will utilize Wheaton’s terrific Mars Center for Science and Technology as well as their Makerspace. This is

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Neuroscience program. At Wellesley, we’ll be adding a one-week Medical Rounds program that we’ve been designing with EXPLO Staff alum Dr. Andrew Eyre of Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

shaping up to be a truly extraordinary program.

Explore More on the EXPLO Blog Links to the content referenced throughout this newsletter is available on our blog. Check it out: http://blog.explo.org/the-explo-update-2017

www.explo.org 781.762.7400

EXPLO summer programs create a dynamic environment of intellectual inquiry, responsible decision making and spirited adventure. Led by enthusiastic teachers, our students are encouraged to respect the differences that make us individuals and to find the common ground that makes us a community. At its heart, EXPLO inspires students to challenge themselves, discover the world of people and ideas, and experience the joy of learning.

Summer Programs on the Campuses of:

Yale University

Wellesley College

Wheaton College