During this leave I was in residence at the University of Southern California, first as visiting scholar in the department of sociology and then as Adjunct Professor of Technology and Society in the Iovine-Young Academy for Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation. The primary benefits of my time away from Mills were expanding my expertise in the reinvention of higher education, getting trained in innovation education and design thinking, and having the opportunity to exercise my technology, engineering, and artistic skills. I look forward to the chance to apply all of these here at Mills.
While on sabbatical:
- I gave several talks for Mills audiences on my work on the future of higher education:
- Spring 2014 "Can EdTech Save Liberal Arts Colleges or Can Liberal Arts Colleges Be Saved From EdTech," Mills College Alumnae San Diego Chapter;
- Fall 2014 "If Small Liberal Arts Colleges Did Not Exist, Would Someone Invent Them? OR The Small Liberal Arts College as Startup," Palo Alto Mills Club;
- Spring 2015 "(Disruptive) Innovation as a Liberal Art," Washington, D.C. area Mills Club.
- This past winter and spring I was a part of President DeCoudreaux's team that planned the Institute for the Future workshops.
- In spring 2014 and spring 2015 I gave talks at admitted student events in Pasadena for the office of admissions and met with prospective students in southern California.
- During the spring 2014 semester I undertook for then Provost Phillips an analysis of five years of Mills enrollment data as a part of my work on pedagogical productivity, efficient resource deployment in small colleges, and improved balancing of enrollment loads. I developed a website I call "Majoring in the 21st Century" for collecting ideas on innovations applicable to small colleges like ours.
- I presented "Learning to be a Node" in the department of sociology at USC and completed work on a book, Ghosts of Organizations Past, that was published in June by Temple University Press. My article "Majoring in the 21st Century" appeared in the Mills Quarterly (Winter 2015) and I co-authored an op-ed "But What if the Shared Vision Is Myopic?," with Sara Goldrick-Rab in the Chronicle of Higher Education (January 12, 2015).
- I attended several conferences/meetings including the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association in Chicago, World Economic Forum Summit on Global Agenda in Dubai, and Innovating Justice Summit in the Hague.
After sabbatical I took unpaid leave, continuing to work at USC and then traveling to Dublin and Berlin to research innovation education.