Four Years, Four Walls: Innovating Beyond The Classroom

By Kara Miller   |   Saturday, November 19, 2011   0 comments.

Part one:

Part two:

Professor Walter Lewin's lecture, "The Birth and Death of Stars," is available to the public via MIT World. Online lectures are a relatively new way of granting individuals not affiliated with a university the chance to learn from them.

As students grapple with the high costs of college, and universities work to cope with increasing demand, could a new model for higher education be on the way? Or is it already here?

We speak with Walter Lewin, the MIT professor who has broken ground by making his lectures accessible via television and the Web, bringing his teaching to millions of people; the founder of an education hub that's entirely online; and the president of a Massachusetts college that has consistently pushed the envelope in finding new ways to teach — and fund — its students.

Guests:
 

• Walter Lewin, emeritus professor of physics, MIT Department of Physics (find many of Prof. Lewin's online lectures here)

• Peter Hopkins, co-founder, The Floating University

• Richard Miller, president, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

• Clayton Christensen, professor, Harvard Business School; co-author, "The Innovative University"

Rethinking Higher Education

By Kara Miller   |   Saturday, November 19, 2011   0 comments.

Facing rising costs and a changing economic environment, colleges may be on the verge of a sea change.

Student loans now top a trillion dollars — more than America’s credit card debt — promising to burden young adults well into their 30s and 40s.

And beyond cost, there are questions about content. As China and India rise, American leaders worry that we don’t have enough engineers or computer scientists.

So, should the focus of education be changing? Does career-oriented training now trump a liberal arts education? And how do we best position American students for the challenges of the 21st century?

Guests:

• Clayton Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; co-author, "The Innovative University"

• Walter Lewin, emeritus professor of physics, MIT Department of Physics

Xconomy Report For Nov. 18, 2011

By Xconomy.com   |   Friday, November 18, 2011   0 comments.

Nov. 18, 2011

CAMBRIDGE — The Boston-area tech community is forever lamenting the loss of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom dropped out of Harvard and moved their companies, Microsoft and Facebook, to the West Coast. (See the fuss over Zuckerberg's recent visit as an example.) But now the university is doing something about it. Today marks the official opening of the Harvard Innovation Lab in WGBH’s former office space in Allston. The $20 million center for entrepreneurship’s unstated goal is to keep the next Gates or Zuck in town — and foster a new generation of student-run startups. The director talks about the project. And here's five things we've already learned about the place.
 
In other innovation news...
 
Lexington-based Avaxia Biologics raised $2.2 million from investors in Boston and Providence, R.I. Avaxia is developing an anti-inflammatory drug by inoculating pregnant cows and collecting antibodies from their milk.
 
Rapid7, a Boston-based security assessment software maker, revealed a new $50 million venture investment, the same day that security software company CounterTack said it raised $9.5 million and moved its headquarters from the D.C. area to Waltham.
  
And two Boston-area teams took the grand prizes in a national startup competition run by the Kauffman Foundation. Fenugreen sells patented food-packaging material for reducing spoilage and DynamoMicropower develops micro turbine-based power generators.
 
The weekly roundup of business, technology and life science news from our partners at Xconomy.com airs every Friday on WGBH 89.7 Boston Public Radio.

Greener Architecture For The 21st Century

By Kara Miller   |   Friday, November 11, 2011   0 comments.

This week, architects, builders, and entrepreneurs join us for a discussion about green architecture. How can remaking homes, apartments, and public spaces benefit the planet and increase our interaction with the world around us?

An Apex green-roof installation is seen atop the Potter League For Animals building in Middletown, R.I. (Courtesy Apex Green Roofs)

What are the newest innovations in green building, and could they change the face of Boston and other cities?

We also look at whether these innovations can be broadly adopted — and what could stand in their way.

Guests:

• John Fernandez, associate professor in Building Technology at MIT Dept. of Architecture; principal, Lampietti Fernández architecture

• Matthew Noblett, partner, BEHNISCH ARCHITEKTEN

• Charles Sinkler, owner, Apex Green Roofs (Somerville, Mass.)
  
   

Facebook's Zuckerberg Returns To Harvard

By WGBH News   |   Monday, November 7, 2011   0 comments.

Nov. 7, 2011

BOSTON — Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is in Boston Monday, making appearances at Harvard and MIT, where he’s trying to recruit new hires.

Zuckerberg went to Harvard himself, but this is his first trip back since he dropped out and left for Silicon Valley to start his massive online social network. He made waves in Boston’s tech and start-up community last week when, speaking at Stanford, he said Boston could have been a viable alternative. "Honestly, if I were starting now, I should have just stayed in Boston," Zuckerberg said.

Boston's start-up scene has grown since Zuckerberg left the city seven years ago. But Jeet Singh, the co-founder of RedStar, a Cambridge company that develops start-ups, told Kara Miller on WGBH's Innovation Hub that the city still has problems with its own social network that may be limiting for some entrepreneurs.

"Boston’s always been a rich source of talent of a lot of different kinds. A lot of the smartest people in Boston don’t actually talk to each other so much," Singh said. "The resource is there, but they don’t necessarily communicate."

Both of Zuckerberg's Monday recruiting talks are said to be private events.

A Better City, One Street At A Time

By Kara Miller   |   Saturday, November 5, 2011   0 comments.

Listen:

Urban planners, architects and designers are full of new ideas for remaking the city as a whole, one street at a time.

Winthrop St., in Harvard Square, was turned from a car throughway to a pedestrian-friendly walkway. (Courtesy Cara Seiderman)

We sit down with three experts to talk about how you get people to move from the suburbs back to urban areas, how you can repave streets to make way for pedestrians and bicyclists, how climate change affects cities and how urban spaces will evolve in the 21st-century city.

Guests:

• Cara Seiderman, transportation program manager, Environmental & Transportation Planning, Cambridge Community Development Department.

• Aaron Naparstek, founder, former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog; Loeb Fellow at Harvard

• Ezra Haber Glenn, Lecturer, Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT; author, "Shape Your Neighborhood"

About Innovation Hub

Each week, Kara Miller talks to Boston's most innovative thinkers, examining new ideas and potential solutions to today’s many challenges. Topics range from education to health care to green energy. Join us on Saturdays at 7 a.m. and Sundays at 10 p.m.

Kara Miller
As a radio host, Kara Miller has interviewed thinkers from E.J. Dionne to Howard Gardner, Deepak Chopra to Lani Guinier. She is a panelist on WGBH-TV's "Beat the Press," as well as an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The National Journal, The Boston Herald, Boston Magazine, and The International Herald Tribune.

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The WGBH News team comprises the WGBH radio newsroom, The Callie Crossley Show, The Emily Rooney Show and WGBH Channel 2 reporters and producers from Greater Boston and Basic Black. 

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