The Future of Pedagogical Practice in Higher Education: Rowan University’s PhD in Creativity

Thursday May 22, 2:40 - 3:15 PM, ICM Salle 1-2

Dr. Audrey Ellis, Associate Director and Professor in Residence, Rowan University, PhD in Creativity
Dr. Jonathan Fineberg, Director and Founder, Rowan University, PhD in Creativity

Can you teach creativity? Rowan Faculty discusses the transdisciplinary PhD in Creativity, the first of its kind, for innovative thinkers looking to do creative research that transcends the boundaries of any single field. It explores the methods that have yielded the program’s successful results. The highly innovative research and publication rate of program graduates demonstrate the centrality of the creative methods to all university curricula and this session opens discussion about the neuroscience behind this pedagogical approach. We deliberately selected the first class of eight students with no overlap in field. The cohort included an anesthesiologist, a wine writer for Forbes Magazine, the administrator of the arts and creative learning for the Philadelphia Public Schools, a film-maker from Addis-Ababa researching and directing a film about the space program from an Ethiopian point of view, a Shakespearean actor/director, an elite college academic administrator, the dean of a law school in New York, an art historian/ecologist, an a psychoanalytic therapist from London. In the second cohort we took a defense department terror threat analyst, a jazz saxophonist, the marketing chief of a financial services company, an advertising copy writer, a big band composer, a researcher on Afro Horror Core culture, and a teacher of ESL and theater practice as therapy. Jonathan Fineberg (art history and neuroscience) will lead the discussion as founder and director of the program, along with associate director Audrey Ellis (philosophy and art). Rowan Faculty will be joined by a 2022 graduate of the PhD in Creativity, Eugene Hughes (psychotherapist, London) to discuss the program