Welcome to
Areté
Julycaptures 2017, our aspirations Classical Greek for excellence, justice, or virtue, the concept of areté nicely for children at Moses Brown. We seek to foster the inner promise in all students, and promote habits of mind, body, and spirit that prepare our graduates to do both well and good in the world.
Building an Innovation Ecosystem By Matt Glendinning As summer draws near, I’m looking forward to some recreational reading, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s new book, Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, tops my list. The core of the book is about how to navigate and thrive in a high-change environment. The world in 2017 is certainly that, and our Moses Brown microcosm is no exception. We opened a completely-renovated Walter Jones library at the start of the school year and the Woodman Family Community & Performance Center in December. We formed a partnership with the Boston-based non-profit SquashBusters and are now building a squash and education facility on our campus that will serve 100 public school students, and provide collegiate-level facilities for MB’s squash players. And a few weeks ago we broke ground on a 5,000-square-foot Engineering & Design studio called the Y-Lab, which will open when we return to school in September. As groundbreaking as these new developments
are, I see them as part of a continuum that goes back to our roots. Early Quakers—including Moses Brown himself—felt that education was a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself. Schooling was intended to be used for something, to give children the knowledge to understand their world and the tools to make it a better place. Today, MB’s current strategic plan, MB Believes, focuses on providing students the skills they’ll need to make a positive difference in the interconnected world of the 21st century. It does that by creating an ‘innovation ecosystem,’ a holistic set of programs and facilities that foster three key attributes (what we call our North Stars): Expert Thinking (creative problem-solving), Global Awareness, and Ethical Leadership. It’s exciting that the scope and transformative impact of this model are garnering attention as MB’s faculty share their expertise on the national stage and educators from around the country visit MB to learn about our experiential programs. MB’s vision is also
A HISTORY OF DYNAMISM AT MB • In the late 1800s, new courses and facilities for arts such as woodand metal-working mirrored societal changes driven by the Industrial Revolution • The introduction of Advanced Placement courses in the 1950s and ‘60s, particularly in Math and Science, prepared students for success in the age of Sputnik • And in the 1970s—coincident with the rise of more collaborative and diverse workplaces—MB launched programs like Team Trips, seeking to build the trust and collaboration that turns a group of individuals into a high-functioning team
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