Faculty for the 21st Century
Of special note: One of the special benefits available to PKAL Members are the F21 Summer Leadership Institutes. To learn more, click here.
Begun with support from the ExxonMobil Foundation, Project Kaleidoscope continues to build a national network of emerging leaders in undergraduate STEM. These are faculty who have been identified by their senior administrators as having demonstrated leadership potential within their local community and with the potential for national leadership into the next century. Known as PKAL F21 (Project Kaleidoscope Faculty for the 21st Century), this network offers members a wide range of opportunities to become productive agents of change and visible leaders within their campus and disciplinary communities.
I shall take it as self-evident that each generation must define afresh the nature, direction, and aims of education to assure such freedom and rationality as can be attained for a future generation. For there are changes both in circumstances and in knowledge that impose constraints on and give opportunities to the teacher in each succeeding generation. It is in this sense that education is in constant process of invention.
- Jerome S. Bruner, Toward a Theory of Instruction, 1996.
Our goal for the PKAL F21 Network is to foster the capacity for leadership for each and every F21 member by providing significant opportunities to explore new ways of thinking about students, about science and technology, and about society. Our hope is that in such explorations, each will discover new ways of using his/her enthusiasm, energy, and passions to make a difference. Our intent is to build a supportive alliance in which F21 members can contribute to and lead in the work of transforming the learning environment for all undergraduate students in this country. The members of the PKAL F21 Network are leaders, who, to use the definition of Barbara Kellerman of Fairleigh Dickinson University, "make things happen that would not happen otherwise."
F21 members:
- make connections with the current generation of educational and scientific leaders
- engage in productive dialogue about critical issues that affect the professional and personal lives of academic leaders
- gain experience and expertise in transforming the environment for learning for undergraduate students in mathematics and the various fields of science
In nominating a candidate for the F21 network, the senior administrator makes a firm commitment to join with PKAL in enhancing the leadership capacities of his/her nominee. This collaboration between PKAL and participating campuses is an essential ingredient of the F21 network, recognizing that groups working together can accomplish more than those working in isolation.
There are several levels of benefits for F21 members, all of which require active engagements of the faculty member and his or her senior colleagues in discussing the range of issues that 21st century STEM leaders must wrestle with, day-in and day-out.
Click here to learn more about F21 program benefits.
Events & Activities
- Past F21 Events
- 2008 PKAL F21 Leadership Institute
July 19 - 24, 2008