About CELL's insight series
CELL hosts ongoing Insight Series events to explore big topics that affect students, educators, administrators, and the field of education. Through these events, we engage speakers with deep knowledge of subjects that are being talked about in education and may not have an agreed-upon solution. Many of these events feature guest panelists to help explore multiple sides of complex issues. Through these events, we hope that attendees gain valuable knowledge, as well as practical action steps to take back to their schools, higher education institutions, and other fields.
Past Events
About this event
The human brain is wired to see, listen, and speak. The human brain is not wired to read. Reading is a human invention that must be learned. From the sciences of reading, specifically the field of neuroscience, education has increasingly more access to a nuanced understanding of how the brain processes the written word. Attendees learned about reading and the brain, including information about research-based effective practices that support developing readers.
The keynote speaker for this event was Dr. Elizabeth Norton, a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Dr. Norton directs the Language, Education and Reading Neuroscience (LEARN) Lab, which uses behavioral and brain measures to understand reading, language, and neurodevelopmental disorders. She is particularly interested in understanding individual differences and working toward early identification and intervention for language and reading disabilities.
Dr. Norton has published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and led three major NIH grants yielding over $8 million in research funding. She partners with local public and private schools as well as grassroots and nonprofit organizations to gather data and share findings related to the science of reading. She has been honored with the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading’s Outstanding Early Career Researcher award and Northwestern’s prestigious Charles McCormick Deering Professorship of Teaching Excellence.
About this event
Who Really has Access to Higher Education? The policies and practices that affect access to a college degree. This event gave attendees a greater understanding about what students actually get the opportunity to go to college and how we could potentially improve college-going rates and success for ALL students.
With special guest keynote, Dr. Danette Howard (Executive in Residence from the USC Race and Equity Center), and a panel including Dr. Amber Smith (UIndy's Chief Officer of Inclusion) and Lydia McNeiley (Indiana's 2023 School Counselor of the Year), attendees learned about policies and practices that promote or inhibit access to higher education.
About this event
Across Indiana and the nation, the question on the minds of high school students, including the families and educators who guide them, is: "What is the value of a college education?" A robust labor market, increasing wages, and wariness of student debt are luring an increasing number of high school graduates directly into the workforce. With the state's sharp decline in college enrollment, it appears that many Hoosiers are skeptical about the value of a college education and are choosing a different path.
As the rate of college-going in Indiana declines, our state faces a number of critical questions with significant implications for the future. What are the long-term consequences of avoiding a college education? Has ‘degree inflation’ in higher education created an unaffordable pathway for students, burdening them with a lifetime debt?
Dr. Michael Hicks is a leading economist and professor of economics at Ball State University. He is also the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research. He has been challenging stakeholders across the state to understand and articulate why and how postsecondary attainment matters for our State’s well-being.
In our ongoing Insight Series, hosted by CELL, Dr. Hicks explored what data and research are really telling us about the value of college for Indiana’s students, our communities, and our economic base.
Following his presentation, Dr. Hicks was joined by a panel of key state leaders for a thought-provoking conversation related to how we can respond to the voices and choices of today’s learners by changing and improving our approaches to higher education, workforce preparation, and messaging to the public around avenues to economic prosperity.
About this event
It’s been 17 years since Hurricane Katrina swept through Louisiana, leading to the elimination of the traditional public education system in New Orleans. To this day, school choice advocates and critics alike continue to discuss and analyze the New Orleans story and what it means for the future of education. In his book, Charter School City: What the End of Traditional Public Schools In New Orleans Means for American Education, Tulane University Professor Doug Harris provides an inside look at the New Orleans experiment, and challenges us to look closely at what really happened - leading us to ask, what lessons can we learn from it today? In the first of an ongoing Insight Series hosted by CELL, Professor Harris explained findings from his book and was joined by panelists Dr. Jeff Butts, Superintendent of Wayne Township, and Mariama Shaheed, CEO & Head of School for Global Preparatory Academy@ Riverside 44 to discuss what these lessons mean for our city and state.