RE Log Fall 2016

16 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2016 Jean Duty Mathematics Department Chair 12th-Grade Academic Dean BS Barry University Two years ago, we read a book called Where Good Ideas Come From, which talked about this idea of shared space. Sharing space with people of different backgrounds not only gives you new ideas, but it also helps those ideas grow and become fruit- ful. That’s what I’m really looking forward to in a new space, a new building. One of the benefits that we already have in the math department is shared offices. With that sharing of office spaces, you find that ideas bubble up and bump against each other, and that is how you grow, how you learn, how new ideas get generated and new programs get started. Right now students have this space outdoors in the Quad, which is great; I think they share a lot of good ideas there. And there are students who will spend time in the math office, hanging with us just because they like math and want to share their thoughts about it. But I do think it will be more free flowing and productive if students with various different interests, different talents, different ways of looking at the world – if they all have a chance to share a new academic space. If we do it right, it will foster critical thinking and creativity. I don’t believe everything needs to be a product in the end. Thoughts, to me, are products. If we can encourage our students to think openly and critically about the world, and put them in an envi- ronment where they are constantly getting feedback and input from their classmates and teachers, then we’ve done our job. We could create courses that would invite the art people or the social sciences people in to the STEM building. The building would be great for those oriented toward math or science. We want them to be curious, and we also want to foster a creative spirit. You can get trapped into thinking that every- thing is based on the numbers, that that’s the only truth there is. It’s not. I believe that we are starting to realize that it takes a group of people with diverse backgrounds to solve problems. It is no longer about having just scientists working together on a biology project, but you have a scientist, a math person and an artist, and they will all see the same data differently. As a result, we might actually solve some really big problems. We want to solve them here at Ransom Everglades. It is no longer about having just scientists working together on a biology project, but you have a scientist, a math person and an artist, and they will all see the same data differently. As a result, we might actually solve some really big problems. We want to solve them here at Ransom Everglades.