Academy Elaborates on Stanford Collaboration

With an aim of launching a partnership between Stanford University and the Academy, two Stanford professors presented an assembly talk last Friday, Jan. 24. Their mission is to tap into students’ creativity at Exeter to develop young minds that are prepared to effectively respond to the world’s needs in the 21st century.

John Barton, director of Stanford University’s Architectural Design Program and one of the speakers, hopes a collaboration between Stanford and Exeter will generate a space at Exeter where students can exercise innovation and creativity. The Stanford-PEA partnership already exists with PEA’s Summer School program, and organizers hope to extend the program to regular term students. Barton uses resources such as drawings and buildings to allow students to explore the physical world around them. His colleague, Amy Larimer, believes that “creativity and the act of making is an incredible compliment and catalyst, playing a huge role in discovery and cultivation.”

Larimer is convinced that “it’s not only the practice of making something physical. It’s also a practice of awareness...seeking out opportunity in the abundance of your everyday at PEA.” She hopes the partnership will develop powerful cognitive habits that will allow students to find ways to exercise their ingenuity and creativity in their daily lives.

History instructor Michael Golay said that although the Stanford program would be beneficial in sparking awareness about what Exonians should be doing, integrating an innovation-driven learning style in some of the disciplines outside of art could pose more of a challenge. Because building and drawing is not a normal part of the history curriculum, Golay said that Stanford’s ideas could better be incorporated through senior research projects.

“A senior research project is one example of utilizing the creative mindset that Stanford tries to promote in Exeter’s highly-organized academic setting.”

“We have extraordinary students here, and my experience as a history teacher has been that they do their best work when they’re working independently on something they’ve chosen rather than an essay assignment I’ve given them,” Golay said. A senior research project is one example of utilizing the creative mindset that Stanford tries to promote in Exeter’s highly-organized academic setting.

Others worry that the Academy does not do enough to foster creativity. History instructor Giorgio Secondi said, “because we’re a highly structured and demanding school, we run the risk of leaving students little time to experiment and try new things, i.e., little time to cultivate their creativity.”

During their presentation, Barton and Larimer emphasized the power of innovation and explained the ways in which the Harkness method influenced their Architectural test-program. “We discovered this summer that the students learned how to build the tools they needed at the time they needed them to move their ideas forward,” Barton said, addressing the integration of Harkness into the program.

The use of the Harkness method is one of the key factors that originally attracted the Stanford professors to the Academy. To them, Harkness is the perfect backbone of an institution whose main objective is to support the development of unorthodox ways of thinking that will create imaginative solutions in the future. “Even though it has been around for more than 60 years, it is more cutting edge than a lot of the technological fixes that are seen as a panacea for our national educational woes,” Classics Department Chair Nicholas Unger said, regarding the Harkness method.

Upper Katya Scocimara had a similar opinion toward Harkness. “It would be a great method to implement, especially for design, because it takes a lot of collaboration and I think it will help pull from different parts of people,” she said. “Harkness is a very real-world situation. [You] learn with peers through collaboration and discussion to come up with ideas and a better understanding of things together.”

This “real-world situation” is compatible with Stanford’s mission to create an environment in which students can prepare their minds to solve the problems in our larger society.

Looking to the future, both Larimer and Barton believe the two approaches to education—and the two institutions as a whole—can work hand in hand. “It feels like there is limitless opportunity to experience the values of each of our institutions and offer our expertise to one another,” Larimer said. “It is heartening to move forward in the spirit of Harkness: innovation, creativity and service.”

The main purpose of the Stanford project, according to Larimer, is to cultivate problem-solvers of the world, deeply rooted in goodness and collaboration. Both Barton and Larimer believe that Stanford and Exeter have much to give and take and are optimistic that the strengths of each school will supplement each other well. “Stanford is known for innovation and ‘daring greatly.’...Bringing these elements, along with the entrepreneurial and creative spirit of the program, would be a tremendous complement to the goodness and service model Exeter embodies,” she said.

Larimer hopes to create a system very different from current teaching norms. “I believe the loss of the arts in many educational systems is a great tragedy. To have an environment that supports the cultivation of creativity and problem-solving not only in the arts, but through a variety of interdisciplinary investigations, is a bold and rich academic model,” Larimer said.

“This, coupled with Harkness, is a powerful and essential approach to holistic education that affords the beautiful balance of integrating the left and right brain, depth and breadth, linear and lateral thinking. Creativity is foundational to what the world needs.”

The program, if successful, would allow individuals to become fluent in not only the subject material, but also the art of collaboration and integration—abilities essential for the ever-changing workplace.

As the problems facing society evolve, the Stanford collaboration revolutionizes teaching dynamics by integrating collaboration and creativity into their teaching methods.

Unger acknowledged that while knowledge is important, teaching collaborative, pragmatic skills is even more essential. “So complex are the problems that face society today that it is not enough for a school to simply disseminate knowledge—which is not the Harkness ethos anyway—instead, we must develop habits of mind that will devise creative solutions for the future.”