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>> I think it's an area that a lot of people, right now, currently,
especially lower classmen are not really informed well about.
>> And then seniors are kind of cynical and pessimistic and they're applying
to all these jobs not really having known what to expect or known how to prepare themselves.
>> And so we hope that a program like the one the Center
for Professional Development is creating will help students understand the importance
of entertaining these opportunities early in their college career.
>> And this is a program specific to first years and to sophomores,
to give them the professional skills or the skills sets and the competencies
that are needed for postgraduate success.
And we define that as employment, graduate school, service, and or a fellowship.
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The goal, today, was to give students a sense of ownership of a new program
that we're creating here at Dartmouth called the Professional Development Accelerator.
In the design thinking process allows the students to help us in the Center
for Professional Development, to create that two year program.
>> I've always wanted to get a feel of what it is to be design thinking.
So I thought this would be a good way to experience that.
>> Design thinking is essentially a process of problem solving and getting
to innovation that matters to the end user.
It's a process that puts the end user at the center
of the problem solving and discovery process.
And it takes people through a series of well defined steps
that lead to accelerated innovation.
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>> Learning a theory of approach and then immediately applying
that to a concrete problem, I think is very useful.
I think that one of the major problems in academia that when you teach people kind
of business leadership, et cetera, is that you do a lot of hand [inaudible].
You do a lot of generalization.
You do, you know, you want to do this and then you want to do this
but you don't really get a chance to hands on try it.
And I think this is one of the great opportunity to actually go
from theory to practice at the same time.
>> It always starts with sculpting an issue and today we sculpt for the students their challenge
which is to develop an optimum professional development accelerator.
Then they move into research and then questions, they want to go out and ask other students
and professors here on campus and members of the community around, you know,
what it is that people feel are important ingredients in professional development.
>> I think it's going well.
I really wasn't expecting that we would go outside and actually interview people
but it makes sense that companies and organizations really need to value the feedback
of people that are going to be their consumers.
They can't just rely on their own opinions.
>> Why don't we bring everybody in together?
That, to me, seemed like a really cool,
really great idea because Dartmouth is this huge community
and you can't just look at a subset of it.
You've got to look at the whole thing about it and so it's really interesting to me,
to be thinking about all the different ways that this community to come together
and solve different problems and from different perspectives.
>> So some really interesting and innovative ideas came out from them
that the team is very readily able to incorporate and more importantly build off of.
I think we're able to -- going to be able to produce a very concrete plan
and a very concrete product that, I think, we're all fairly excited about.
>> Towards the end of the day they'll take their best ideas that they all voted on
and they'll storyboard a process that takes the person they're designing for through, you know,
the need they have and how this professional development accelerator is going
to meet their need.
And then they'll finalize their pitch and they'll propose to each other
in a fast paced set of presentations their ideas for the process
for a student to get professionally developed.
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>> As students in the classroom, we learn a lot of things.
We develop our intellectual knowledge and philosophy and maybe our own kind of theories
about how the world works and what we want to do in the world.
I think, for us, it's giving some kind of structure in which
to take all these great thoughts that we have here whether it be what we learn
from our classes and our professors or even our friends here and translate
to something that we could really understand.
Okay, here's what we do to make that kind of dream we have in our mind
of how we want to impact the world a reality.
>> A lot of the presentations they talked about the importance of networking
with employers, with alumni, and with parents.
The other thing that we heard today was technology, really improving our website
and using other technologies to help support their growth over the next four years.
>> Something like this isn't really a conversation you have
on a daily basis with friends and all.
So the chance to go out and actually interview people and talk about it and then come back
and start thinking about problems and solutions and things it's been fun.
And it's also just, I think, a good process of getting these steps down on how to go
through a problem and break it down and solve it.
It's been really useful.
>> Higher education's changing.
The whole world in terms of, you know, development and globalization,
it's changing the way we have to think as scholars,
not just scholars I think human beings.
Being aware of not only how to think and what to think about but how to translate that in a way
that is great for interaction with people because in the end we're not interacting
with books when it comes to the work world, we're interacting with people eventually.
And whether it be you're a scientist or whatever, you have to, you know,
be able to collaborate with your fellow colleagues
and whatever field you end up going to.
So I think this is a great step in the right direction.
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