Episode #63: Grace Greenwald - Pedagogies to Address the Meaning Crisis

On this episode of the podcast we talk with Grace Greenwald, Research Director at the Springboard Foundation for Whole Person Learning about the white paper she recently researched and wrote entitled "Distinctive Pedagogies that Address the "Meaning Crisis' in Higher Education:" Case Studies from Microcolleges and Living-Learning Institutes." This study is a marvelous new resource for the growing Microcollege Movement, featuring case studies of 4 exemplars of this new field: Thoreau College, Outer Coast, the Tidelines Institute, and the Seguinland Institute. Applying concepts from the work of cognitive scientist John Vervaeke on the "meaning crisis," Grace explores ways in which intimate, place based, and physically engaged higher education programs like these help to cultivate a sense of meaning and purpose for their students. Grace Greenwald graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Human Biology concentrating in Neuroethics, and received her M.Ed from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studied education leadership and school design. She served on the team building Outer Coast, a nascent liberal arts college in the rural island community of Sitka, Alaska, and later supported The Burke Middle School in Boston and Workshop U in Philadelphia. At Springboard, Grace helps to tell the story of emerging small-scale, place-based schools and their communities through portraiture, research, writing, and narrative. On her own time, Grace is learning her way around a woodshop, and thinking about the role that labor, building, and fabrication could have in our education system.Springboard Foundation for Whole Person Learning: https://www.springboardlife.org/Distinctive Pedagogies that Address the "Meaning Crisis" in Higher Education: https://indd.adobe.com/view/50a1af48-a183-4a1e-91bb-c70ae0defa91Outer Coast: https://outercoast.org/Tidelines Institute: https://www.tidelinesinstitute.org/Seguinland Institute: https://www.seguinlandinstitute.org/Thoreau College: https://thoreaucollege.org/