What could drive Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dean Christine Ortiz to take a leave from one of the top schools in the United States? A passion to change universities as we know it. Ortiz not only wants to create an university that has no majors, lectures or classrooms, she also wants to make it a nonprofit.
In an interview with The Chronicle, Dean spoke about her plans to build a better university, one inspired and influenced by her seventeen years at MIT and time traveling around the country.
Ortiz cites her interest in curriculum and her research on education structures as inspirations for her goal, considering the way we do education now as being a little old. Using MIT as a model, she feels project-based learning is key to keeping students passionate, especially longer-term, integrative projects over shorter ones. She also would like to do away with lectures, instead having a database of virtual knowledge that students can access to teach themselves using modular lessons with various educational “mechanisms of learning embedded into the system.” Physically the school would likewise do away with classes, with huge project spaces and centralized laboratories in their place. There would be no departments or majors, just a transdisciplinary system that gives students a little liberty in mapping out the course of their college journey.
Ortiz admits the university will require serious financial backing, which will need fundraising to get started. But Ortiz says she’s had “an outpouring of support.” She also says that “all of the revenue can be reinvested in the enterprise to serve the public.” The school is planned to begin with a Boston campus that will have up to 10,000 students and 1,000 faculty members, which is about the same size as MIT. If successful, she will replicate the model with more schools in other locations. Ortiz believes she can attract prestigious faculty members who have had a hard time finding work in an otherwise overcrowded industry, and she says students are already sending in requests to apply.
There currently is no name for the university and no clear idea of when the school with debut, though Ortiz hopes for nothing more than a few years. This isn’t the first school to consider a nontraditional method of teaching, but this is one of the few that seeks to do so as a nonprofit.
Will she succeed? Only time will tell, though this is certainly a valiant and ambitious effort. Tell us what you think in the comments below and stay tuned for more details.
Source: The Chronicle
Feature Image Source: GW@MIT Fall Leadership Conference 2014