President’s Lecture

Howard Gardner to speak on good work research Feb. 12

Howard Gardner, author of the theory of multiple intelligences, will give a President’s Lecture, titled Good Work in Tumultuous Times, on Monday, Feb. 12, 2001, at 6:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching. This event is free and open to the public.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Harvard Professor and renowned education thinker Howard Gardner will speak on Good Work in Tumultuous Times as part of the Brown University President’s Lecture series on Monday, Feb. 12, 2001, at 6:30 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, located on The College Green.

The author of 18 books and several hundred articles, Gardner is best known in educational circles for his theory of multiple intelligences, in which he posits that there are several types of intelligence beyond the verbal, analytical and mathematical skills measured in traditional standardized tests. He has been involved in school reform efforts in the United States since the mid-1980s.

Most recently Gardner’s research has focused on intensive case studies of exemplary creators and leaders. He and psychologists William Damon and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have been examining the relationship between cutting-edge work in various fields and social responsibility for the use and implications of that work. It is this study that will provide the subject of Good Work During Tumultuous Times: Gardner will present initial findings from the Good Work Project, a large-scale research effort documenting how leading practitioners in several professions are dealing with rapid change and powerful market forces. He will discuss how journalists, scientists and other professionals attempt to carry out Good Work when long-held assumptions no longer apply.

Gardner was born in Scranton, Pa., in 1943, the son of refugees from Nazi Germany. He was a studious child who became an accomplished pianist before developing a strong interest in psychology. He was educated at Harvard University, where he trained as a development psychologist and later as a neuropsychologist. Currently he is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also holds positions as adjunct professor of psychology at Harvard, adjunct professor of neurology at Boston University School of Medicine, and co-director of Harvard Project Zero, a research group in human cognition and the arts.

As a result of his work, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981 and has received 16 honorary degrees – from Princeton University, McGill University and Tel Aviv University, among others. In 1990 he became the first American to receive the University of Louisville’s Grawemeyer Award in education, and in 2000 he was awarded a John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He was recently listed in Palmer and Cooper’s 100 Great Thinkers on Education (Routledge Publishing Co., 2000).

The lecture is free and open to the public.