Organised by Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL)
Details of the workshop:
Time : 13:00pm – 2:00pm
Venue : Room 321, 3/F, Run Run Shaw Building (Main Campus), HKU
Presenter : Prof. James Cohn, Quest University Canada
Facilitator : Dr. Cecilia Chan, Head of Professional Development, Associate Professor, HKU
HKU staff and invited guests only.
Abstract
Most undergraduate majors offer students a paved highway with milestones to pass, and students (and parents) may happily banish their own anxiety over their education by knowing what the check-boxes are. When we trust students to tell us their concerns, however, we sometimes find that their curiosity and their drive may have little to do with the skills and content prescribed for them. When we grasp that education does not simply mean filling empty vessels (students) from full vessels (professors), we face the challenge of designing a curriculum that engages and truly addresses the learner. The curriculum at Quest University Canada may not work for all universities, but the example may prove provocative, and stimulate a conversation about the ends of undergraduate education, and about the advantages and disadvantages of an interdisciplinary approach.
About the Speaker
James Cohn is a founding faculty member of Quest University Canada, a new and innovative undergraduate institution located north of Vancouver, BC. He has served there as Coordinator of the Arts and Humanities, Chief Academic Officer, and Executive Vice President. He received his BA in French and German from Dartmouth College, and after graduation won a Fulbright award for the study of literature and society in post-war Germany. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago, studying in the interdisciplinary Committee on Social Thought under the direction of Nobel laureate Saul Bellow. His PhD takes up the problem of the influence of the Duc de St.-Simon’s Memoirs on Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. He was a tenured “tutor” at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM, before emigrating to Canada to help design and run the fledgling Quest. His guiding question is, “What are the liberal arts?”
For information, please contact:
Mr. Thomas Lau , CETL
Phone: 3917 4807; Email: kanclau@hku.hk
