Planning continues for the inauguration of Wittenberg's 15th president, Dr. Michael L. Frandsen, at 4:45 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in historic Weaver Chapel. The totality of the Wittenberg experience will shine throughout the week of special events and during the ceremony itself, which will feature Dr. Randy Bass, vice provost for education and professor of English at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., and founding executive director of Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, as the keynote speaker.
An expert in the intersections of new media technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning for 30 years, Bass has served as director and principal investigator of the Visible Knowledge Project, a five-year, $4 million project aimed at improving the quality of college and university teaching through a focus on student learning and faculty development in technology-enhanced environments. The project involved 70 faculty on 22 university and college campuses.
For the past four years, Bass has led Georgetown’s Designing the Future(s) of the University Initiative and Red House Incubator for curriculum renewal. Committed to equity and a robust conception of educating the whole person in the 21st century, the Designing the Future(s) Initiative supports curricular innovation as an inquiry into new ways for Georgetown’s educational practices to align with its institutional identity and values.
According to the university website, the Initiative’s iterative research and design processes are used to explore the expanding contexts of liberal and professional education, the well-being of students and faculty, and the ways in which higher education can renew its greater purposes and ultimately serve the common good. It was launched through a university initiative as a response from national conversation about the nature and value of traditional higher education and what a Georgetown education might look like five, 10, or even 15 years into the future.
Bass has published extensively on findings from numerous national projects. He was also a consulting scholar from 2003-2009 for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, where he previously served as a Pew Scholar and Carnegie Fellow. In 1999, he won the EDUCAUSE Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Technology and Undergraduate Education. In 2017, with Heidi Elmendorf (Georgetown), he co-founded the Hub for Equity and Innovation in Higher Education.
The author and editor of numerous articles, electronic projects and books, Bass earned his Ph.D. and his M.A. from Brown University, and his B.A. from University of the Pacific.
The inauguration date was selected following several conversations with senior leaders, program coordinators, faculty, staff and members of the Presidential Transition Team with extensive insight from Frandsen, who believes firmly that “the focus of any inauguration must be on the academic enterprise and student success.” The date was chosen as a lead-in to the all-campus Celebration of Learning and Honors Convocation, scheduled for Friday, April 6.
The inauguration ceremony will be followed by a reception on the chapel lawn and a range of other activities. A complete list of inaugural events and related information is available on the university’s inauguration website at: www.wittenberg.edu/inauguration2018.
