Research centers

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Transcript

Narrator:
An increasingly important aspect of the college community is the number of international students.

Nadir Budhwani, Ph.D. candidate, human resource development; M.Ed., 2000:
My name is Nadir Budhwani, and I’m a Ph.D. candidate in the College of Education and Human Development. I'm originally from Pakistan. My program is human research development, which is within the Department of Work and Human Resources Education. With the passage of time, I have also taken interest in international affairs from a political perspective, and I believe that HRD has a lot to offer when it comes to making foreign policies.

Narrator:
Just as important as the international challenges, however, are the developments taking place in our own increasingly diverse communities.

Big Ngo, assistant professor, teacher education:
Our population in the Twin Cities now is vastly comprised of immigrants, and our teaching force does not reflect that. What I’m trying to do is understand what it's like to be an immigrant student, and then from there, try to figure out how best we can teach them and attend to the needs of not only the students, but their families and community.

Narrator:
Just as diversity is part of education's future, technology is providing new and exciting ways to teach.

Aaron Doering, assistant professor, learning technologies; Ph.D., 2003:
Adventure learning is where you take a real-world experience and tie it to a k-12 curriculum with an online learning environment to provide for collaborative opportunities. I take all the images that we've collected throughout the week and download it here to the computer. It's delivered to the University of Minnesota, then posted online for millions of students worldwide. They are so motivated to learn--it's authentic--they see what's going on in the real world. Tying this K-12 curriculum to an online learning environment to an exciting adventure in the real world is the perfect mesh of technology, of content, and motivation to get students to want to learn, and that's ultimately our goal.

Robert Bruininks, president, University of Minnesota; former dean, College of Education and Human Development:
One of the great hopes I have is that we will bring fields together that study in the broadest sense the development of human capital throughout the life-span. By looking at these issues in a far more interdisciplinary way, I believe the University of Minnesota will be one of the premier centers of scholarship and education in the world.

Narrator:
A century of learning, research, facing challenges, and inspiring minds, however impressive, is not the end of the story of the College of Education and Human Development. The future lies ahead, with countless new lives, new approaches, and new discoveries. The college will face that future, uniquely equipped with its strong traditions of preparing teachers, promoting literacy, researching new ways of learning, and exploring human development.