The Role of Mental (Non-Cognitive) Skills in Talent Development

• Highlights
• Transcript

• Summary of The Role of Mental (Non-Cognitive Skills) in Talent Development

  Daniel Boulos, Academic Relations Specialist for Pioneer, introduced the panelists speaking about The Role of Mental (Non-Cognitive Skills) in Talent Development: Susan Corwith, Director of the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University, and Brian Cooper, Director of Academic Research and Development at Pioneer. Both panelists illustrated their talks with slide presentations.

  Corwith began by describing the two pieces needed for talent development: first, the right level of challenge, and second, developing mental or psychosocial skills. These include: academic behaviors, learning to study effectively; academic perseverance, working hard through something before experiencing the reward; learning strategies, understanding how you learn; academic mindsets, understanding the importance of your academic work; and interpersonal social skills, empathy towards others and the ability to cooperate. Research into how successful athletes reach high levels of achievement has suggested qualities important for the development of academic talent as well.

  These qualities include: teachability, being open to feedback and focused on improvement; the ability to cope with anxiety, to take some intellectual risks; the ability to handle competition and criticism; being able to develop coping mechanisms; developing strategies for resisting negative peer pressure or stereotypes. These qualities can be developed in the same way anything is learned: by “getting to the edge of your competency, pushing the boundaries.” “You can’t learn what you already know,” she pointed out.

  The “five Cs” can help discern if an offering is at the right level. Do I have some choices, some control? Am I working at the right level of complexity in a situation with appropriate challenges? And do I have caring adults as guides and mentors through the learning process? Key to the process is having a growth mindset, and the ability to set SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely).

  Cooper noted that thinking about developing non-cognitive skills, asking “what can do the most to expand me as a human being,” offers a different way to look at choices of curricular and co-curricular opportunities. He referred to the list of qualities business leaders are looking for that Matthew Jaskol introduced in the opening session. While knowledge is still important, he noted, the kind of person that you are is increasingly important, and he showed some examples of how “soft skills” such as empathy have practical value in the business world. He also emphasized that the goal of developing non-cognitive skills is not just another way to get a better job, but, as Frank Bruni emphasized in the keynote talk, to live a fulfilled life.

  Cooper offered a framework of four points to consider when evaluating a learning opportunity: content, is it interesting to me in some way; process, how will I be learning; product, how will I be expected to show what I have learned; environment; where will the activity take place? Simply doing this evaluation, he said, is already practicing non-cognitive skills. 

  A student participant asked what non-cognitive skills universities look for. Corwith responded that community building and openness to new ideas are valued at Northwestern.

  • 

    Susan Corwith Director, Center for Talent Development Northwestern University

  • 

    Brian Cooper Director of Academic R&D Pioneer Academics

• 00:00:01
  Daniel Boulos (Pioneer Academics): Alright. Welcome back everybody. For our next discussion The Role of Mental (Non-Cognitive) Skills in Talent Development, in this session, Brian Cooper, the Director of Academic Research and Developer, Development at Pioneer, will be joined by Susan Corwith, the Director for the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University. With that, I thank you both for being here, and I will turn it over to you, Susan. Take it away!

  00:00:32
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): Great! Thank you very much, so pleasure to be here. Let me go ahead and get my slides up here and we’ll get going, alright. Hopefully, everyone can see that alright and get going. Yeah, today we’ll we will talk a little bit about the role of these non-cognitive or mental skills in talent development.

  00:00:56
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): And I think we want to start with what we really need for our talents to develop sort of coming from the, the lens of the framework and education of this idea of talent development. So, and it’s a lifelong process. And in order for this to happen, we really kind of need 2 pieces. And this is this optimal challenge. So, you think about academics or being in school, sort of the right level of challenge. And I’ll talk a little bit more about what that means, because we want to leverage our strengths.

  00:01:25
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): And then the other piece of this and this is something maybe we don’t talk about as quite as much although they’re really important, are these mental skills, these non-cognitive skills, what some of us in education and psychology put under the umbrella of psychosocial skills. So, support for the development of these is that second piece of the equation.

  00:01:45
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So, I wanna dive a little bit into kind of what we’ve learned about psychosocial skills. And there’s been a lot of research over the last, you know, 10 to 20 years on these mental skills or these psychosocial skills that are so important to talent development and this report from the consortium on Chicago School research kind of put these, these skills into 5 different buckets or categories. Everything from academic behaviors so things that you do when you’re learning to do homework or to study in a, in an effective way, to academic perseverance. So, when you hear words like grit or tenacity, or sort of being able to work hard through something before getting the reward.

  00:02:26
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): The idea of learning strategies. So again, another piece of study skills, metacognitive skills which means sort of thinking about your own thinking and understanding how you learn. These academic mindsets so how you understand your learning, the confidence you have in yourself as a learner, and understanding the importance of the academic work that you do. And then the final category being social skills, interpersonal skills, so your empathy toward others, your ability to co cooperate in different situations. All of these are important skills that we do have to learn, and what the research has told us over the last decade or so is the good news that we can develop these skills. And it’s really important that we think about these psychosocial or mental skills as opportunities for change or levers for change, when it comes to affecting our growth or our development, particularly in academic areas. We need to sort of have a good mindset or a mindset that keeps us in a learning, in a learning zone, in a, in a way of thinking that we can affect our achievement, and that, combined with these learning strategies sort of how well you know how to study or how well you understand the way you learn best or the way you regulate your emotions. Our set goals all have an impact on your academic achievement.

  00:03:47
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So, what’s been really kind of interesting in the research is what’s been learned from different people in professions and some of the research started in sports psychology. So, there was a study that I have here of Olympic athletes.

  00:04:01
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): And they were to the researchers were particularly looking at what are the skills and strategies that they point to in their success in how they reach the highest levels of achievement in their athletic endeavors. And it really kind of boiled down to the things you see here on the screen, and they’re probably not surprising to you. But there are things that these athletes have really focused on and practiced over time, anything from their ability to focus, to having hope or being able to set goals to cope with sort of the stress of their environment, the competition. The coach ability is one I’m going to call out because they really felt that it was important that they worked well with their coaches, and they, they took in feedback. They recognized that they didn’t have all the answers. They didn’t know how to do everything perfectly, and that they needed someone from the outside who was working with them to give them the feedback that they could corporate that would change their practice. You’ll see on here things like high optimism and drive, adaptive, adaptive perfectionism, meaning that they set really, you know, pretty high goals for themselves, but not so high that they couldn’t achieve them, or that they got upset with themselves when they didn’t achieve those goals.

  00:05:15
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So, I think there’s been, you know, the lot of research in this athletic area. But what about academics? And that was another set of researchers that were paying attention to these psychosocial or mental skills needed for high achievement in specific domains, different professions, academic areas. And this is some of the work that we’ve done at the Center for Talent Development and over, you know, time and working with different individuals, we’ve learned some similar things. So, if we, you know, take a look at the list of what athletes said was important, and then we kind of take a look at the list that you see here, it’s pretty interesting. There’s some crossovers when I call out here, teachability which would be very similar to that coach ability.

  00:05:57
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So, the idea of us being open to feedback and focused on improvement, understanding that we really can change and grow and develop over time with the right experiences. But it’s important that we learn how to cope with anxiety because we’re going to take some intellectual risks in our work. And that’s really important if we’re going to develop expertise in our areas of study. Being able to handle competition and criticism. What are sort of the strategies when you are benchmarking yourself about against other people who are expert, or at least very skilled in the same subjects in which we’re working. Being able to develop coping skills for stress or anxiety, or times that you encounter things that sort of shake yourself, confidence a little bit. The developing strategies for resisting negative peer pressure or stereotypes that you may encounter.

  00:06:48
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So again, the good news being that there are ways that we can develop these strategies by putting ourselves in opportunities where we have to practice. And that gets me to this next slide, which is really about the idea of in order to engage these skills or to work on them we have to be willing to get to the edge of our competency. Which what I mean by that is pushing the boundaries of what you already know and can do because you can’t learn what you already know. You can’t develop skills if you’ve already got them, right. The learning environment is what in education we call an optimal match, or being in your learning zone. So, what I called out here is that without an appropriate level of challenge, you can’t learn to study, you can’t learn to manage your time or cope with disappointments or setbacks, because you’ll be too busy just sort of floating through or skating through, and something that’s too easy for you.

  00:07:39
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So really thoughtful risk taking is key to getting to higher levels of talent development. So, taking advanced classes, participating in competitions, entering accelerated programs, going to a summer program are all things that can be really valuable when you’ve identified something that’s an area of interest or a strength for you.

  00:08:00
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So, when students don’t get to work in their, you know, sort of learning zone or when they’re consistently working environments that are well beyond their readiness, that’s when you start to run into some difficulties. So, I think in this slide, I’m just trying to point out that what for you, for yourselves, when you’re thinking about different environments that you’re in or opportunities you’re taking and this is something that Brian will talk a little bit more about, you want to understand what, what level you’re working in, and sort of move yourself appropriately. So, starting in the center is kind of that comfort zone. You know, this is where we’re hanging out and relaxing and sort of things are coming pretty easily. We feel relaxed and you know it’s, it’s stuff that we’re familiar with.

  00:08:38
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): But then there’s this next level, which is that confidence zone that you still maybe haven’t learned all of the knowledge and skills yet but you’re, you’re feeling really comfortable and confident in that work. You’re not maybe having to invest a lot of time or mental energy and doing it. So that’s not the place where you want to be all the time, because you’re, you’re again not sort of pushing yourself to learn new skills yet. So that next layer is the edge of confidence zone, or that zone of proximal development which is really kind of fancy. You know education and psychology term from love, by Gatsby. But it really just means that optimal match, that learning zone, that space where you’re working hard but it’s not overwhelming. It’s that place where it’s testing your skills, testing your knowledge and you’re sort of attaching new pieces or new skills to what you’ve already gained. That’s where we want to be most of the time and we certainly don’t want to be in this out of your League zone, where you’re feeling like things just don’t make sense. It’s just too hard, too much time invested. And it’s not getting anywhere. So, if you can sort of understand these different levels and assess where you are at different times, in different places, you can start to make those adjustments for yourself, because ultimately there are 5, you know, C’s. We talk about in the right level of engagement. And this is kind of always what we’re aiming for in learning, for talent, development.

  00:09:56
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So, the idea of having some choice. You know. What are my choices here? Do I have some control, or do I get to as the person in the space get to determine what’s happening next? Am I working at the right level of complexity? Is this sort of novel or new to me or am I getting a chance to engage in some open-ended activities to apply my learning so that I can feel that challenge.

  00:10:18
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So, if you’ve ever been in a time or space where you’ve sort of lost time where you didn’t even realize how focused you were on something until later on. That’s that right level of challenge or flow. And this is all supported by caring adults, those coaches, those mentors, those teachers who can help you get to that right zone and to the next level of talent development.

  00:10:40
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): And if you’re going to work in this zone, you have to have sort of a learning focus, perspective or mindset. And this is Carol Dweck’s work at Stanford. She talks about mindsets, and so the idea of fixed mindsets and growth mindsets, and none of us are always going to have a growth mindset. That’s just not who we are as human. We have our ups and downs. So sometimes we’re going to be more fixed then we are growth. But if we talk about sort of our long term goals, or our sort of pathway into college and career beyond, if we want to, as often as possible have that growth mindset where we understand that we can embrace challenge, because that’s how we learn. That if we work hard sometimes it’s going to go well, and sometimes it’s not. But we can learn from the times that it doesn’t go, that well, we can learn from criticism. We can find lesson in the success of others and the inspiration of doing this work.

  00:11:31
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): And so finally, to have us get into that growth mindset it’s really helpful to learn how to set good goals. So that growth mindset comes from setting appropriate goals, goals that are too large or abstract can be really difficult to achieve. So, we want to think about what we are going to call smart goals. And you know, those of us who are kind of in professions we may have to do this for our jobs. But some of these smart goals S.M.A.R.T are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.

  00:12:03
  Susan Corwith (Northwestern): So, on the slide here I just have a couple of examples of what these might look like, and these are really simple starting, starting points for you. And you can continue to grow on those and develop those and make them a little bit more complex as you become more familiar with setting these goals. But ultimately, if we do that you will develop the, the mental skills that are required for that long term talent, development. And they will, these skills will serve you well into adulthood. But just keep in mind that these mental skills require time to develop, practice and these optimal match environments which I’m going to turn over to Brian to talk a little bit more about right now.

  00:12:44
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): Great! Thank you so much, Susan. So before I jump into my part of the presentation I do want to just remind you that if you have questions please go ahead and drop those in the Q&A and we will hopefully have some time to answer those questions at at the end of our presentation. So I, I want to really focus on this framing that Susan talked about, about talent, development. And this being kind of a, a lifelong pursuit. And so we’ve talked in some of the other panels today and, and other sessions about choosing activities within the framework of how are these going to help me get into college? And clearly, that’s, that’s very very important, and I don’t want to diminish the importance of that. But I do think that this gives us an opportunity, particularly when we’re thinking about these types of of non-cognitive skills. It gives us an opportunity to take, maybe a longer view, a different view. And to think about this idea of developing ourselves, developing our talents, reaching our potential. And if you were with us for Frank’s keynote this morning you know, he talked about this idea of evaluating opportunities in terms of which one can do the most to expand me as a human being, right? And so this is a, a different way of thinking about evaluating either curricular or co-curricular opportunities.

  00:14:26
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): And so I’d also like to kind of frame this before I start sharing a few slides that mainly I’m going to be talking as if I’m talking to a student audience. But if you’re an educator or a parent, I’d like for you to think about how you can be one of those supporting adults. How you can be one of those people that are helping your children or your students. To think more intentionally about developing these skills as part of a broader, a broader plan. And again, a broader intentional plan of talent development.

  00:15:10
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): So, with that, I’m going to share my screen. Give me just a second here. Okay, great. So, some guiding questions for this part of our time together. How can we understand the importance of these skills outside of an academic contact? So, we already talked a little bit about this in this idea of a broader perspective, a broader view of talent development. And then how can we evaluate educational opportunities relative to their potential to help us develop these particular types of skills?

  00:16:11
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): So if you were with us at the very beginning of the session. Matthew Jaskol talked a little bit about the World Economic Forum. And this is a group of economic, finance and governmental leaders, they meet every year in Davos, Switzerland. They evaluate challenges that the world is facing, and they also try to take a longer view of okay, how is the world changing? What are things that we’re going to need in the future? And so here you see their projection of what businesses envision, the top 10 skill priorities being in 2027.

  00:16:49
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): And so I want to just quickly highlight that you see here, they’re really 5 of the top 10 are fully kind of squarely in this this realm of what we were just talking about of the psychosocial, the non cognitive. And this reflects a change that yes, AI is accelerating. But it’s really been going on for a long time, really, since the age of the Internet, and maybe even before that where there’s been, been a shift in it’s not so much important what you know, although that is still important, content knowledge is definitely important. But what’s increasingly important is who you are, the type of person that you are, the ways in which you, you manage yourself and your own learning and your interactions with other people.

  00:17:43
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): And so you see here that, that 5 of the 10 are squarely in this, this realm that we’re talking about. And in addition, you see at least 2 others, creative thinking and design and user experience that are built upon or relate very closely to some of these skills. So, Susan talked about intellectual risk taking and, and appropriate risk taking. Well, I would argue, and many others would argue that it’s impossible to be a creative thinker, a truly creative thinker without taking risks.

  00:18:25
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): Likewise, when you think about design and user experience, part of what is kind of baked into that is, is an understanding of other people and understanding of their needs and understanding of how they might navigate a particular app or website or product. And so again so now we see fully 7 of the top 10 and 3 of the top 5 are in this realm that we’re talking about.

  00:18:58
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): And so, I think it’s really important to emphasize this, that this isn’t just some esoteric, Oh, some, some researchers at Northwestern or other places, you know, are, are talking about this. This is, this has very concrete implications in the real world.

  00:19:16
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): At the same time, I also don’t want to, to fall into the trap of, say, well, it’s not just about getting into college and swap out a career for, for college. I want to go back to part of what Frank was talking about this morning, about what it means to live a fulfilled life, what it means to kind of become who you fully are meant to be, and I think these types of skills are really, really important when we think about that.

  00:19:47
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): So to emphasize the point that Susan talked about, when I was in graduate school at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, I had a professor Doctor Gerald Unks, and one of the things that I remember most vividly, he said, multiple times, he said, you learn to do what you do and not something else.

  00:20:09
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): And his point was exactly what Susan was talking about earlier that to develop these skills requires practice. So, we can’t develop empathy unless we have opportunities to take on other people’s perspectives to engage with other people and learn about them, and how they think. We can’t develop persistence or resilience to challenge if we’re never challenged. So, I think this is a really helpful framing and so what we’re going to go into next is thinking about 4 things to evaluate in learning opportunities and part of what we’re going to be evaluating is to what extent will a particular learning opportunity give me the opportunity or the that, that practice, that ability to do what it is that I’m trying to learn. So, in education there are, there are 4 different broad aspects of a, of an educational experience. And so I’m going to share these as a framework for you as a student, or, again, the parents and, and counselors or teachers that might be helping to support and mentor you as kind of a framework for helping to evaluate these things. I should say that there is no right answer to some of the questions I’m going to be posing, and by that I mean, there’s no single right answer. Again, going back to what Frank mentioned earlier, we’re not looking for a recipe here. We’re not looking for a, a checklist where you can just check all the boxes but we want this to be a framework that will allow you and those who support you as a student to engage in thoughtful reflection, thoughtful goal setting, thoughtful planning, and so actually doing what we’re talking about here is actually a way of practicing some of the very skills that we’re, we’re talking about.

  00:22:26
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): So with that, the one of the first things for you to consider is the content. What is it that you’ll be learning? What is the academic content or subject matter that that’s clearly important even when we’re thinking about these psychosocial skills and so some questions that you might want to think about very intentionally. How does the content relate to my academic strengths? How does it relate to my interest? Both of those are going to have a relationship to your motivation.

  00:23:00
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): It doesn’t mean that you always have to do something in your strengths. In fact, you may want to explore things that will help you develop other skills. But working in an area of strength and interest is generally going to drive more motivation for you.

  00:23:21
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): So those are important things to think about. Similarly, as we’ve talked about, earlier interests may not be fully formed yet, so maybe you, the answer for you is, yes, I want to do more in my area of interest. But maybe your answer is, I need to do a little bit more discovery. Maybe I need to see what are some things that I could be interested in. Again circling back to what Susan said, will this content be in the right zone for me?

  00:23:49
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): You know you, you might not want to take, you know, a, an astrophysics course on Cosmology if you don’t have, you know, sufficient background knowledge that might put you in that out of the League category where you’re just going to be frustrated. But at the same time you don’t want to be spending time on content that you already know. The second big thing that you want to evaluate is process. And Bruce Hammond talked a lot earlier about process. This is, how will I be interacting with the content? What are the activities that I’ll be engaged in as part of the learning, and there are a number of different things that you can, you can think about. So am I going to be in a summer school class on a college campus where I’m going to be in a big lecture hall, and mainly I’m going to be listening. I’m going to be sitting and getting. Or am I going to be doing an independent study an independent research project where I’m doing a lot of work on my own? Am I going to be doing some group work? Am I going to be collaborating with other people?

  00:25:01
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): Am I going to be doing field work. Am I going to be actually out there, you know, really doing this thing that I’m learning about in a in a much more concrete way? Am I going to be creating something original? Am I going to be modeling and creating and experimenting in this way with maybe a simulation or a lab.

  00:25:26
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): So again, you can think about all these different processes might help you as an individual develop different skills. If you’re particularly comfortable with one area then maybe you need to stretch yourself a little bit. You need to realize that maybe sitting in a lecture hall, even if it is on the most prestigious campus maybe isn’t going to give you the opportunity to develop much in the way of coach ability or teach ability, because you might not be getting a lot of feedback. You know maybe you won’t be able to develop as much empathy or, or the opportunity to collaborate.

  00:26:07
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): The third aspect is the product. This is another, how question, how will you demonstrate your new knowledge, skills and understanding? How are you going to, to show to yourself and to others what you’ve learned. Again, taking a, a standardized test or a multiple choice test. There is value in that, for sure. But how is that going to be different than giving a, a presentation on original research, or, again, creating something entirely original, designing an app to address a particular problem.

  00:26:48
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): So, Susan again talked about this idea of complexity and open endedness. If you go back to you know that that multiple choice test, not a lot of open endedness there. But doing your own research, brings in some of those ideas about your own control, your own self determination. It can build persistence because you’re going to hit some brick walls if you’re trying to design your own app, that’s going to be an iterative process. There are no single right answers to these things, and that can help you develop some of that persistence. It can help you develop some of that resistance and coachability.

  00:27:33
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): Lastly, you want to think about the environment. Where are you going to be learning? And this can be both formal and informal. It can be physical or virtual. So again, are you going to go on a college campus? Or are you going to be online?

  00:27:51
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): If you’re going to a college campus, is it the college in your city, or is it a college around on, on the other side of the country or around the world. Those choices are going to have implications for you. They’re going to move you out of your comfort zone as, as and as Frank said this morning he talked about fit, and he said fit shouldn’t mean comfortable. In fact, sometimes the best fit should be that it makes you uncomfortable in productive ways. So, some other questions to think about with the environment as you evaluate opportunities.

  00:28:35
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): Well, where are the other participants going to be from? Are they going to all be from my school? Are they going to be regional? Are they going to be national? Are they going to be global? Well, why is this important? Well, if we want to develop collaboration skills if we want to develop empathy and Pers, you know perspective taking, then having a more diverse group of students that we’re working with, diverse in, in various characteristics will help us develop more empathy. Will help us to understand others, perspectives in ways that a more homogeneous group a group of people who are like me is not going to help me develop that skill in the same way. And then, thinking maybe more broadly about, in what ways will other participants, including the instructors or the, the professors, the teachers, the adults, how are they going to be able to support the goals that you have for this particular learning experience? How are they going to be able to challenge you? Those are really, really important things to think about. So again, quickly 4 things to think about.

  00:29:51
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): The content or the what the process, the how, the product, the how you’re going to demonstrate what you’ve learned, and in the environment where you’re going to be learning, and with whom? And again, if you can engage in this kind of thoughtful reflection about some of these questions, either for yourself and or with, with adults who can help mentor you, then that very process you are practicing some meta-cognition. You are practicing goal setting. You are practicing, developing self awareness that is going to help you continue to develop and enhance those skills that will supplement your, your cognitive development. That will supplement that academic knowledge and really accelerate and, and, and jump start your broader sense of talent development.

  00:30:54
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): So, with that, I’m going to bring Dan back in. I know we, we have just a few minutes maybe to, to hit some questions here not a whole lot of time.

  00:31:06
  Daniel Boulos (Pioneer Academics): Alright. So yeah, we don’t have time for maybe 2 questions. So, this this first one, I, I want to preface this by saying this, Brian, I know you, you talked quite a bit about, you know, thinking beyond you know what these concepts have to do with college admissions and such. But this, this question that, that a student asked I think is, is an interesting one.

  00:31:25
  Daniel Boulos (Pioneer Academics): Could you please, and this is for both of you, could you please provide insights into the non-cognitive skills and qualities that universities value? And I wonder, maybe, maybe, instead of thinking in terms of like what universities value from an admissions perspective, maybe think about the kind of skills that might lead to success on a college campus like you might, you might have some thoughts on, on the kind of cognitive skills that are valued on, on the campus so to speak.

  00:31:53
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): Sure! Susan, would you like to jump in, or would you? Sure? Yeah, I’ll just quickly say, just from where I am at, at Northwestern we talk a lot about this idea of community building. So being able to network with others, get to know other people, communicate, collaborate and the idea of asking questions and sort of problem solving right. So all of those kinds of things are, are really important as well as that intellectual risk taking being open to ideas, to trying new things. You know it’s and is in our DNA was kind of the tagline at Northwestern for a while, kind of looking at things from different perspectives and combining different fields and different ideas together.

  00:32:37
  Daniel Boulos (Pioneer Academics): Great! So Brian, do you want to, want to jump in?

  00:32:44
  Brian Cooper (Pioneer Academics): Well, I was just going to jump in. Another thing that you know related to that community building is that that idea of empathy being able to get along with and productively with people from a range of different backgrounds. That is incredibly important in, in any college environment.

  00:33:02.
  Daniel Boulos (Pioneer Academics): Good, great.

  00:33:03
  Daniel Boulos (Pioneer Academics): Great. So you know and I said, we have time for 2 questions, but in looking at the time I see we are less than 2 min away from the start of our next panel, so I think we will have to end it here. Our next panel What’s Key about Transformative Education will be starting in just under 2 min at 2:45. And with that I just want to thank once again, Brian and Susan for leading such a great discussion. Thank you both very much.