A Take Away from the Inaugural Pioneer Summit: Questions Transform Learning

The First Annual Pioneer Academics Co-Curricular Summit was held on September 30 and October 1, 2022, in celebration of Pioneer’s 10th anniversary as a provider of rigorous online research experiences for high school students from around the world.

Currently there is no other forum for educators, parents, and students to engage with distinguished academic programs. The Summit was designed to connect the most respected academic programs directly with students and educators in an easily accessible online format. Pioneer’s strong academic reputation attracted ten other widely respected academic programs as co-presenters. Sixty-five percent of attendees came from the United States, and 52 other countries were represented.

The theme of this year’s conference was “transformation.” The keynote speaker was New York Times best-selling author Warren Berger, a “questionologist” who spoke about the importance of asking the right questions to effect high-impact change in the world. Other sessions addressed issues such as the new approaches to online education that have come out of the COVID years of remote learning, how to develop research questions of substance and significance, and the importance of academic rigor in the research process. A Second Annual Summit is planned for 2023.