iSchool Colloquium Series
November 22, 2010
John Leslie King
Vice Provost for Strategy, and W.W. Bishop Professor
School of Information at the University of Michigan
[ poster ]
The i-Schools in the Transformation of Higher Education
Abstract: Higher education in the US (and much of the rest of the world) is facing its most challenging transformation in more than 150 years. The forces behind this will be discussed, focusing on the importance of higher education (hint: too important to be left to higher educators), the relationship between higher education and "freedom" (hint: more twisted than first meets the eye); and the social contract between higher education and the commonweal (hint: it's changing). The i-Schools fit into this transformation in funny ways, but not funny "ha ha." An effort to make sense of it all is promised.
Bio: John Leslie King is also the former Dean of the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He came to Michigan in 2000 after being on the faculty at the University of California, Irvine for 20 years. His research examines the relationship between technical change and social change, focusing in particular on information technologies and highly-institutionalized production sectors including common carrier communication, transport, finance, health care, and higher education. He is currently a member of the National Science Foundation's Advisory Committees for Cyberinfrastructure and for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, and a member of the Council of the Computing Community Consortium. He holds a PhD in Administration from UC Irvine and an Honorary Doctorate in Economics and Business from Copenhagen Business School.
