Reinventing the Classroom: Perspectives on Technology and the Purpose of Education
The movement of information online challenges the old role of the lecture hall as the place where the learning of the professor is passed on to students.
Students are already voting with their feet, not showing up to class if they can get the same information via the Internet. This challenge is forcing the faculty to rethink how they use classroom time and why they are teaching what they teach. Together with the emergence of mass online education, these developments are causing universities to reflect on the real purposes of undergraduate education, which were never about mere information transfer in the first place.
Join us on Wednesday, July 26th at 6:30 pm for dinner and a lecture by Professor Harry Lewis.
- Current Student | New Graduate | Recent Graduate Members and their guests: $36 (Current Student and New Graduate Memberships are free / Recent Grad Membership is $30/year)
- All other members and their guests: $45
- Non-members: $65
Ticket includes full dinner, drinks, and lecture - ONLINE REGISTRATION CLOSES AT 12 PM on Wed, 7/26
​MENU
- Grilled wild caught Alaskan salmon, mango black bean salsa, jasmine rice and grilled asparagus
- Chicken Piccata
- Corn on the cob with parsley butter
- Ratatouille
- Orange segments quinoa, toasted sunflower seeds and red pickled onions, champagne vinaigrette
- Pineapple upside-down cakes and chocolate lava cakes
- Fresh fruit
Biography
Harry Lewis has been on the faculty at Harvard for 44 years, a span which includes terms as Dean of the College and as interim Dean of the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. A summa cum laude graduate of the College in 1968, he served as a commissioned officer in the US Public Health Service at NIH in Bethesda, MD, from 1968-70. He joined the faculty in 1974 after receiving his PhD in applied mathematics from Harvard, and became full professor of computer science in 1981. He is the author of six books and numerous articles on various aspects of computer science, education, and technology.
During his years on the faculty, Lewis has created much of Harvard’s undergraduate computer science curriculum. He counts among his former students the founders of Microsoft, Facebook, and Tripadvisor, and more than a dozen computer science professors at Harvard, other Ivies, Stanford, and MIT. The website “Six Degrees to Harry Lewis” created by Mark Zuckerberg while at Harvard was a precursor to Facebook.
Lewis is a long-time member of the College’s Admissions Committee. In addition to teaching a variety of courses in Computer Science, Lewis offers a Freshman Seminar on Amateur Athletics, exploring the social history of sports in America and especially at Harvard.
In March, Professor Lewis announced that he will be retiring in 2020 after 55 years of affiliation with Harvard. An endowed professorship of Engineering and Applied Science will then be named for Lewis and his wife, Marlyn McGrath, Director of Admissions for Harvard College. Their daughters, Elizabeth AB’01, MBA’06, and Annie, AB’07, MBA’12, live in Washington, DC.