Jan. 20, 2011

'Future' symposium reformatted, rescheduled to March 9

by Diana Pounds

A half-day symposium on "The Future of Learning, Research and Collaboration" has been postponed from Feb. 1 and reformatted into a March 9 keynote session that organizers hope will allow more faculty, staff and students to attend.

The session will begin at 4:30 p.m. in 1148 Gerdin with a one-hour presentation by Donald Norris, a national expert on navigating change in universities and president of the Herndon, Va., consulting firm Strategic Initiatives, Inc. A reception will follow.

Norris' talk will help kick off a campus-wide dialogue about how students, faculty and staff at Iowa State will learn, collaborate and do research in the future, said Elizabeth Hoffman, executive vice president and provost.

"Amid the blistering pace of technological change, we need to look forward several decades and decide what kind of new learning environments and spaces we'll need not only to keep pace, but to thrive," Hoffman said. "A key part of that will be developing facilities that are flexible enough to accommodate the rapid changes ahead."

Several ISU work groups will begin exploring these issues in depth over the next few months, Hoffman added.