What I’m Reading Now: Creating a Learning Society - Dr. Kimberly Engber

  I am reading Stiglitz and Greenwald Creating a Learning Society because we are part of a university moving by leaps and bounds toward a new innovation campus.  Although Stiglitz and Greenwald are economists, I’m not reading them to learn economic theory.   I want to know where I fit into the new university, and I want some context for thinking about how an Honors education fits into this new push for innovation.  Stiglitz and Greenwald argue that the market economy efficiently produces goods but does not produce and transmit knowledge efficiently.   And, entrepreneurship depends on the efficient production and transmission of knowledge.  

Photo by George Hodan

    From where I sit—with the sun finally streaming into the windows of Shocker Hall after long days of cold and clouds, warming the purple succulent that graces my windowsill—innovation is simply learning by another name.   Good entrepreneurs have the ability to learn and adapt, and they gain that ability, as Henry David Thoreau did in the nineteenth century, by developing a keen awareness of their world, themselves, and the people around them, by reading the signs in books and in beans, by sometimes following a line of thought away from social expectations.  So where does Honors education fit?  It facilitates and critiques innovation, as the university always has; it turns toward light, toward producing knowledge that will move us all together.

     Remember to let us know how you are moving the world by reporting your engagement hours to honorsugfellow@wichita.edu.