Director of Media Relations
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AMHERST, Mass.— Howard Gardner, MacArthur Fellow and the author of Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons, will speak on “What Does College Have to Do With Meaningful Work in a Meaningful Life?” at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 29, in the Cole Assembly Room in Converse Hall at Amherst College. Sponsored by the Victor S. Johnson Lectureship Fund, Gardner’s talk is free and open to the public.
The John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the senior director of Harvard Project Zero, Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists a single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard measures. During the past two decades, Gardner and his colleagues at Project Zero have been working on the design of performance-based assessments, education for understanding, the use of multiple intelligences to achieve more personalized curriculum and the nature of interdisciplinary efforts in education.
In collaboration with psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and William Damon, Gardner has been studying GoodWork—work that is at once excellent in quality and also socially responsible. The GoodWork Project (www.goodworkproject.org) includes studies of outstanding leaders in journalism, law, science, medicine, theater and philanthropy, and an examination of exemplary institutions and organizations. The first book to issue from this research was Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (2000).
Gardner’s books include Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century (1999), The Disciplined Mind: Beyond Facts and Standardized Tests (2000), Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing our Own and Other People’s Minds (2004), Making Good: How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work (2004, with Wendy Fischman, Becca Solomon and Deborah Greenspan) and Multiple Intelligences (2006). Five Minds for the Future will be published in April.
The Victor S. Johnson Lectureship Fund was established in memory of Victor S. Johnson (1882-1943) by his sons for the purpose of “bringing to the campus each year a stimulating individual worthy of the lectureship’s purpose of serving the best tradition of the liberal arts and individual freedom.”
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