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 Preliminary Prospectus: Please return comments and suggestions to: Project Renaissance, Box 332 Gaithersburg, MD 20884-0332 Come join us in creating Contents
 Photo courtesy of Elan Sun Star Prologue It has been the dream of some of us, for more than a third of a century, to create the first of a new kind of university. · A university in which all participants can actualize a far greater proportion of their intellectual and human abilities. · A university whose practices reflect that vast majority of scientific findings about the human brain and mind and about human learning, performance and productivity, which have emerged over the past several decades but which have not found their way into standard classroom practice. · A university where enough of the right things are done together to make a meaningful human difference. · A university whose people are stimulated and encouraged to help initiate a new renaissance in science, culture and the arts. · A university which, in a changing world society and economy, will create and graduate not narrowly-based specialists but true masters of several fields simultaneously, true Renaissance men and women—polymaths who can not only navigate readily the sea-changes now running in both science and the economy, but take brilliant advantage of the synthesis and productive isomorphisms to be found between disciplines. During that third of a century we have been finding—and sometimes creating—the best methods and techniques on Earth for learning, teaching, training, and for human growth and development. Each of these makes a major positive human difference, and positive change in educational and intellectual outcomes. Some of these methods are rooted in the time-honored Socratic Method, now finally understood after twenty-two centuries. We had thought to share some or all of these methods freely and widely with many existing schools at all educational levels. We found, instead, rigid and ill institutions generally unable—or at best unwilling—to test and use even the simplest and most obvious of these, regardless of immediate and long-term and in some instances well-demonstrated benefits. These "institutions of learning" and school systems have treated our suggestions and proposals the way they have treated the positive sound suggestions and proposals of practically everyone else who had anything to offer. We salute the few, courageous, outstanding exceptions. We think there is still positive opportunity for major useful positive cooperative endeavor, very good things which can be done in existing colleges and universities and high schools, and in major technical and scientific corporations. Should some existing college or university undertake to not only test 1-2 of our Project Renaissance educational methods but to test enough of them together to make a significant human difference: we could still swing our efforts back from creating a new university to help make that existing university the finest school on the planet. Past a certain point, however, it is more practical to continue our efforts to create a new university altogether. We will nevertheless, even past that point, willingly help existing colleges and universities and schools to improve their own educational outcomes, even while we go hard to work to produce our own. Starting a new school is an effort and endeavor not lightly undertaken. Had other schools actually lived up to their own rhetoric, especially as regards quality teaching and learning, that would have contented us. But schools have not exactly been lining up to seek out and adapt the best available methods of teaching and learning, whether ours or anybody else's. For such methods—and all that they can mean to the human condition— to be actualized, a new and model institution is required. A working new model is required as soon as possible. Many independent observers see existing schools and school systems slipping toward cascading difficulties. As do we in Project Renaissance, who have been working to head that cascade off (see “The Shape of Things to Come”). Good working alternative models need to be visibly in place soon, to provide visible and viable options should the main system falter. In any event, when learners can with appropriate methods make many times finer progress than by the methods now in standard practice, to not pursue the appropriate methods by whatever venue and with whatever expedition would be an unconscionable waste, on both practical and human bases. To start a new school is a herculean endeavor facing extraordinary challenges. Many of those challenges will be gratuitous; some will be disingenuous; a few will actually be germane and appropriate. It'd be so much easier to sit back and just write some more books. The need, however, is too compelling and too urgent. It is also too great for us to handle alone. We need you to make this your university, not only ours. Other individuals in many roles and capacities, and other groups and organizations with well-founded visions of their own, are essential to this very challenging effort. Why a University? George Crile, in his A Naturalistic View of Man, argued that a good nursery school is far more important to one's life, more formative and enriching, than is a good college. He is correct. But launching a university lets us address education at all levels, via a brace of laboratory schools. Further, the current form of at least the Project Renaissance methods, part of the starting-up core of what will be used in the University, are presently best developed at adult, collegiate and secondary levels and so can make their readiest contribution at those levels. Moreover, it will be easier to learn from our students and peers at collegiate level in a healthy egalitarian milieu, and to avoid the stultifying authoritarian structures which prevail elsewhere. Virtually all of this present Prospectus will revolve around very positive considerations, description of one ingenious feature after another which will render Renaissance University one of the best possible learning experiences to be found anywhere on Earth. In this Prologue we did need to take into account the degree of challenge awaiting us in the task ahead. We enter this with our eyes open. We also enter this with some sense of urgency, given the current state of educational affairs and the situation of priceless human beings caught up in those arrangements. We also still have out a standing invitation to existing institutions of learning, at all levels, to explore happier and higher ranges of learning achievement than you are presently finding in most of your classrooms. YOURS can be one of the finest learning experiences on Earth. Many of our proffered methods are yours for free on the Net and with them you can, if you care to, achieve extraordinary things. But we can no longer wait for you to get around to doing so.  Photography courtesy of Elan Sun Star The General Program of
Because our instructional methods make it possible, our students will also fully participate in these symposia with their own original and well-considered research, as part of a program wherein they will become professionally published in the fields into which they will soon graduate. Special formatting will make these symposia uniquely productive—and attractive to those cutting-edge top-of-the-field leaders.Formats will include certain forms of colloquium structure, and also the structures developed by Project Renaissance in its own annual conferences. In each site where Renaissance University can establish a strong residential program, it intends to cultivate an atmosphere and custom and practice, year-around, closely corresponding to the best aspects and best years of the annual ten-day Creative Problem-Solving Institute in its earlier (1970s-'80s) form held by the Creative Education Foundation. For the most part, elements which favor a flowering of creativity also favor a flowering of learning, and vice-versa. Uniquely equipped with the best
methods of instruction and human development, Yet at the same time and to the
extent possible,
Full-time students, especially in the liberal arts program, our degree candidates, and many in the community will be pursuing closely monitored and intense developmental programs and practices under personal contract. Staff and faculty and part-time students will also be encouraged to pursue such programs. We will not waste the time and energies of our academic faculty whom we intend to be top quality: by the time a student enters their classes, s/he will be fully competent to function there. We will maintain a second tier of special-purpose classes and community classes for part-time students, however, open to people not already qualified through the developmental programs, where we will rely on the strength of our instructional methods and of our instructors. Location: It is our intent that no one campus becomes so large as to lose its sense of community. Our current thinking is that this may set the upper limits between five hundred and a thousand full-time students per campus, and this is likely to be in the neighborhood of where we actually set our limits as we gain experience with the program. Yet for pursuit of diverse unique and highly specialized studies, the advantages of a much larger university are clear. We intend to enjoy the advantages of both, via the following provisions: 1) We intend to form working alliances with other universities in and around the community. 2) We intend to form multiple campuses within the one community, differentiated by content, style, ideology, method and educational theory, and in a friendly competition with each other. 3) We intend to develop campuses
of 4) Besides developing our own distance-learning resources, we will supply our own instructional tools to and facilitate courses in much of the extraordinary wealth of distance-learning instructional resources now and soon existing. With regard to #3, where will
these different sites be, and where will the initial—and presumably headquarters—site be? We
have been looking at several locations, including the With regard to #4, the main thing
lacking from present distance-learning courses is having several students at
each computer terminal, cued to interact face to face before they have to,
between them, generate a joint response to key questions in the lesson. One of
the starting-up strategies through which we will approach the founding of
Renaissance University is the anticipated starting-up date of year 2015, but
we think other groups and programs will rise to the opportunity to help create
this extraordinary university, whose help will enable its creation much sooner.
In any event, these specialized education-related services, both before and
following creation of Launch Strategies: There are many ways in which the
launching of Creating one course at a time,
and creating a base to work from, would be easier than trying to launch a whole
college or university at one stroke. This "curriculum," however,
would not be the With the launching of the University, if this path is followed, we would attempt a round or so of summer residency featuring an upgrading of the proficiencies already built through such courses, further facilitation of more such courses, some of our various accelerated/enhanced learning procedures so the students can go on to function well in any educational setting, some of our CPS/creativity methods and practices, and some elements at least of our developmental programs. One of the early tasks of Our Product: A graduate with a full liberal
arts degree at |
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