Bio
Greg Farrington
Greg Farrington is executive director and William R. and Gretchen B. Kimball Chair of the California Academy of Sciences. Since beginning his post in 2007, Farrington has focused efforts on addressing what CAS considers to be two of the most important scientific questions of our time: How did life happen? And how can we sustain it? CAS is the only institution in the world to combine a museum, aquarium, and planetarium, as well as vigorous programs of research and education. Farrington came to CAS after eight years as president of Lehigh University. Prior to that, he spent 19 years at the University of Pennsylvania. A widely published chemist, Farrington holds more than two dozen patents and has written more than 100 articles in the fields of solid-state chemistry, electrochemistry, and education.
Sandy Speicher
Sandy Speicher is education lead at IDEO's Design for Learning domain, which brings human-centered thinking to systemic challenges in education. Her work helps students, educators, entrepreneurs, and organizations use the tools and methods of design to work in new ways, to prepare for future challenges, and to transform their organizations and communities. While much of her work has focused on education, Speicher has a broad range of experience leading and contributing to programs in the areas of hospitality, telecommunications, health care, and social innovation. Prior to joining IDEO, she taught visual communications at Washington University and spent six years teaching design thinking to fifth-graders at a public school in San Francisco. She launched her design career at MetaDesign, where her work included brand development, way-finding graphics, and interactive platforms.
Linda Tischler
Linda Tischler is a senior editor at Fast Company, where she writes about the intersection of business and design. For the past several years, she has been responsible for the magazine’s Masters of Design issue, which celebrates people in the forefront of design thinking. She also oversees design coverage and blogs on FastCoDesign, where she launched the site’s team of expert design bloggers. The site won a 2011 National Magazine Award for best specialty magazine site. She writes a magazine column, “Big Bang Design,” which explores how design, when used strategically, can have a big impact on everything from health to education to urban planning and beyond.
Graham Wyatt
Graham Wyatt is a partner with Robert A. M. Stern Architects, a leader in planning and design for academic institutions. Wyatt has directed the firm's master planning efforts for the campuses of Georgetown University, Harvard Law School, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, and Acadia University in Nova Scotia; for the Fine Arts Village of the University of California, Irvine; for the campus of the Columbus Regional Hospital in Columbus, Indiana; and for the Aspen Highlands ski resort. Wyatt speaks frequently on campus planning, classroom design, and sustainability. He has been responsible for commercial, institutional, and residential projects worldwide. Wyatt's work has been widely published and he has written a chapter on the design of academic buildings and classrooms for Building Type Basics for College and University Facilities.
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Encyclopædia Britannica Articles
- architecture
Art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. The practice of architecture emphasizes spatial relationships, orientation, the support of activities to be carried out within a designed environment, and the arrangement and visual rhythm of structural elements, as opposed to the design of structural systems themselves (see civil engineering). Appropriateness, uniqueness, a sensitive and innovative response to functional requirements, and a sense of place within its surrounding physical and social context distinguish a built environment as representative of a culture's architecture. See also building construction.
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- education
Learning that takes place in schools or school-like environments (formal education) or in the world at large; the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In developing cultures there is often little formal education; children learn from their environment and activities, and the adults around them act as teachers. In more complex societies, where there is more knowledge to be passed on, a more selective and efficient means of transmission—the school and teacher—becomes necessary. The content of formal education, its duration, and who receives it have varied widely from culture to culture and age to age, as has the philosophy of education. Some philosophers (e.g., John Locke) have seen individuals as blank slates onto which knowledge can be written. Others (e.g., Jean-Jacques Rousseau) have seen the innate human state as desirable in itself and therefore to be tampered with as little as possible, a view often taken in alternative education. See also behaviourism; John Dewey; elementary education; higher education; kindergarten; lyceum movement; progressive education; public school; special education; teaching.
- education on britannica.com
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