IDS Chair Julian Willard Appointed Harvard Fellow

The faculty at Rivers is always looking for new and better ways of doing things by exploring different avenues of professional development. Interdisciplinary Studies Department Chair Julian Willard will be looking to further one of the school’s most innovative programs through his appointment as a Future of Learning Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education this summer.

 

This appointment comes on the heels of a yearlong fellowship at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics where he was a visiting scholar at The Hastings Center, the preeminent center for bioethics research.

 

“I was discussing my research at Yale with Veronica Boix Mansilla, who is a project leader at Harvard, and she asked if I would be interested in applying for this fellowship for the summer, and I said of course,” Willard said. “Much like many of the Rivers faculty, I love to learn about 21^st Century education and this gives me that opportunity.”

 

Willard will be working closely with Boix Mansilla and Harvard professor Tina Blythe as they plan the 2014 Future of Learning Conference, one of the largest conferences of its kind in the world. Willard attended the conference in 2008, but this year will be helping attendees learn about methods that are on the cutting edge of education.

 

Willard’s research goals are two-fold: To find the best methods for measuring student growth in interdisciplinary studies and, beyond that, the best way to assess students in an interdisciplinary setting.

 

“My hope is that in developing my own research I will be able to take the Interdisciplinary Studies Department to its next steps,” Willard said.