Peter Smith
From the Inside Flap
Statistics reveal that within ten years, less than 20 percent of all ninth graders in the United States will have earned an associate's degree. To remain competitive in the global marketplace, we must dramatically increase our success rates in higher education and bring millions of people from the margins of America's economy into the mainstream.
In this timely book, Peter Smith challenges us to adopt a radically new understanding of effective teaching and learning for today's students. Throughout Harnessing America's Wasted Talent, Smith defines and describes innovative thinking about the current causes for our schools' failings and discusses how these failures have profound and far-reaching social, civic, and economic consequences.
Harnessing America's Wasted Talent suggests three critical ways that traditional colleges block access to opportunity for students and ultimately waste their talent. First, our colleges employ a teaching-learning model which favors one dominant learning style, one resource allocation template, and one attendance pattern over other effective models. Second, institutions are reluctant to validate and recognize learning that occurs outside of college. Finally, Smith posits that transfer policies that consistently discount earned credit from other qualified sources add time, costs, and frustration to degree attainment.
In the final chapters of this much-needed resource, Smith introduces a new paradigm that uses technology and online tools to capitalize on the capacity of every learner and personalize education to meet their needs.
A special break-out session will be conducted with Peter Smith to continue the conversation on his book and his keynote address. Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning can be purchased online via Barnes & Noble or Amazon
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Amazon.com:
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Dr. James W. Hughes is the Dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, appointed to that position in 1995. He has been a member of the faculty since 1971.
Dr. Hughes is a nationally-recognized academic expert on demographics, housing, and regional economics, and was a contributing editor to AMERICAN DEMOGRAPHICS from 1982 to 1996. He is author or co-author of 33 books and monographs and more than 150 articles, generally focusing on housing, demographics and economic development patterns. Among these are THE ATLANTIC CITY GAMBLE (published by the Harvard University Press), THE DYNAMICS OF AMERICA'S HOUSING, AMERICA'S NEW MARKET GEOGRAPHY, and AMERICA’S DEMOGRAPHIC TAPESTRY: BASELINE FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM (published by the Rutgers University Press).
His articles have appeared in such journals as Scientific American, The Public Interest, Housing Policy Debate, Land Economics, Economic Development Quarterly, American Demographics and Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
He has recently been a Distinguished Fellow of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), and has been awarded the Rutgers Presidential Award for Distinguished Public Service, as well as the Distinguished Service Award of the New Jersey Chapter of the American Planning Association. He has been both a Woodrow Wilson and Ford Foundation Fellow and has served as a consultant to numerous federal, state and local public bodies as well as to many private and corporate clients.
He was a member of the (New Jersey) Governor’s Commission on Jobs, Growth and Economic Development, and the Governor’s Logistics Council. He was on the Real Estate Task Force of the (New Jersey) Governor's Economic Master Plan Commission and was a member and Trustee of the successor commission: Prosperity New Jersey. He formerly was on the Board of the E’Town Corporation (N.Y. Stock Exchange) and the Board of the Cali Real Estate Investment Trust (NY Stock Exchange). He was also a member of the Board of Advisors of the Mack-Cali Real Estate Investment Trust (N.Y. Stock Exchange). He has also served on numerous other boards and task forces, including the Board of Directors of the Cooperative Housing Foundation (Washington, D.C.), the Economic Advisors Board of the Council of the City of New York, the (New Jersey) Governor’s Property Tax Commission, and the (New Jersey) Governor’s World Class Economy Task Force.
