CELL hosts statewide education conference
By Fangfang Li | Editorial Assistant
The Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) at the University of Indianapolis will hold the 2009 Indiana’s Future Conference on Nov. 16-17 in Indianapolis Marriott Downtown.The theme of this year’s conference is Bold Choices, Better Schools.
The conference will feature nearly 70 sessions on innovative programs and transformational models in education, partnerships between school community and business and so forth. Besides, Uri Treisman, executive director of Charles A. Dana Center and professor at The University of Texas at Austin, Ken Kay, president of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and Carmita Vaughan, Chief of Strategy Officer of America’s Promise Alliance, will be the three keynote presenters of the conference this year. “This is our fifth year of dong the conference,” said Lauren Howard, director of communications of CELL. “Each year, we focus on innovative ideas to help transform education in Indiana, so that we can help all students graduate, prepare for college and life in the 21th century, and also so that we can help elevate the graduation rate so that all students are graduating from high school. We believe that even one student not graduating is one too many.”
According to Howard, around 700 educators, community leaders and business leaders in Indiana and from other states will attend the conference, and CELL will keep the registration open up until the event. “It has gotten bigger each year,” said David Dresslar, executive director of CELL. “The annual conference was really developed as to reach out to the state. We were doing work in Indianapolis, in the city, but not so much in the state. So the conference was designed to reach out to educators throughout the state and continues to have that purpose.”
Howard also mentioned that the conference’s incorporation of different areas, including education, business and community, made this annual event unique. She said CELL was hoping to develop strong partnerships among people in those areas. “I think that we kind serve a niche within Indiana because there really isn’t another conference likes ours,” Howard said. “A lot of conferences in the educational field are more focus on specific instructional strategies or just elevating the drop off rates or things like that, and we kind incorporate everything. And we connect education reform to economic development.”
She said that the conference tried to make connections among a wide variety of people in different areas as a way to help schools get more supports from the businesses, and at the same time, create students who have good skills for the businesses. “We believe that they [education reform and economic development] go hand in hand because our businesses in our communities are looking for people who are intelligent, who can have good leadership skills and who can write and communicate well, so they’re really looking for well-rounded students. So we bring the schools and businesses together and help them become partners,” Howard said.
During the conference, two topics that CELL has been focusing on, according to Dresslar, were called the new technology high school and early college high school. And both of those networks started a few years ago. The conference will have sessions that students from various high schools talk about their educational experiences, things they want to learn and so forth.
Other sessions will focus on topics such as new technology, how to connect education to the global economy and so forth. “This is an event where everybody comes to learn about all of the innovations that are happening in education,” Howard said. “People go back to their schools and their communities and they’re really energized about something they heard at the conference and they’re really to try to implement. This is kind of our platform to launch a lot of those new, different, exciting strategies that can help improve education opportunities.” When talking about the three keynote speakers of this year’s conference, Howard said each of them will focus on different aspect of education.
Treisman will talk about the innovation in American education and some practical strategies for improving science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. Kay will present the connection between education and economic development, as well as promotes skills such as leadership, group work, communication that are important in the 21st century. While Vaughan’s speech will focus on things that schools and communities need to do to help elevate the graduation rate and prepare students with skills that are necessary in the 21st century. Dresslar said one reason of why the conference could have more and more people come was because of CELL’s efforts in bringing good speakers each year.
“The conference has developed quite a positive reputation among educators in Indiana, and that reputation is based on we’ve done a good job of bringing speakers of significance to the conference,” Dresslar said. “A lot of people that have been before come back because they don’t wanna miss.” In addition to those three speakers, Beverley Pitts, president of UIndy, will also be speaking at the conference.
