Sweet Briar College Magazine - Fall 2018

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THE ARTS DID YOU KNOW? The term “design thinking” was probably coined in the 1960s. IDEO, perhaps the company best known for developing consumer products using design thinking tools, was founded in 1991. Stanford University launched the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, better known as the d.school, in 2005. sbc.edu for a better study space. Using the items in that box, they prototyped things as different as a calming spa space to a smartphone application. According to Hank Yochum, associate dean of academic affairs, “You could probably find a box similar to that in many offices at Google, and there are a lot of people over there making a lot of money using the tools we’re teaching our students.” The faculty noted that a lot of people don’t think they’re creative. Design thinking, Leake says, is a framework that allows people who might not feel creative to come up with innovative ideas. “It’s not about a creative moment of inspiration,” says Penfield. “Anyone can use this process to work collaboratively and come up with innovative ideas and breakthroughs that they might not have come to otherwise. It’s a set of skills that is not often taught in a structured way.” The class is pass/fail, and as a result, doesn’t have an impact on a student’s GPA, but that’s by design, says Lynn Rainville, dean of the <strong>College</strong>. “Solving problems is a process that by definition involves failure,” she says. “We don’t want our students to be afraid of that or to be concerned that failing to solve an assigned problem will have a negative impact on their grade. We want them to fail — and we want them to learn from those failures.” In fact, taking risks and learning from failures is one of the primary goals of the class. Students in the class work in teams. Salvatore says the notion of teams — not just “groups” — is important. For students, group work can be an annoyance, but Salvatore explained that the projects they were doing could not be actually done by an individual — she used the example of raising a barn: even if she wanted to, she could not build a barn by herself, just like the projects the students were working on in the class. Unlike a group, a team is a collection of people focused on a common goal, and everyone on the team has a sense of identity and a shared mission. During the course, students worked in several teams, and some of the students acknowledged that they didn’t always get along with other team members, but that, too, is a learning experience in itself. Learning to work with others wasn’t the only skill the students learned. Because the first step in the process is empathy, students had to learn to talk to someone and really listen to what they had to say. While the students were practicing empathy, they were also learning interviewing and listening skills — and that’s before they’d solved any problems at all. CORE 110 gives students an opportunity to learn these skills so that they’ll be prepared to go into the workforce and collaborate with people of various skills and knowledge. And they’ll be able to work effectively with those people and come up with truly innovative solutions. 8
THE ARTS HOW DESIGN THINKING HAS LED TO INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS It’s a question that gets asked regularly over kitchen tables when kids are doing their homework: “Why do I have to learn this?” And it was one obstacle the faculty of CORE 110 had to overcome with their own students, so one of the first things the students did was to look at some case studies about how design thinking had led to innovative solutions. One such case study was the story of Doug Dietz, a designer for high-tech medical imaging systems for GE Healthcare. Dietz noticed that though his machines were technological marvels, the kids were so scared to get in them that they had to be sedated. Dietz realized there had to be a better way. He took Stanford’s course on design thinking and learned skills that helped him understand a human-centered approach to design. He had to find a way to make the machines less scary. One of the prototypes he designed turned the MRI machine into a pirate ship and after the voyage was complete, there was a small bit of “treasure” waiting for the child in a pirate chest. Children were now less scared and the hospital had less need for anesthesiologists. Everybody won. Some critics of design thinking argue that anyone could come up with these simple-seeming solutions; it doesn’t require a complicated process. But the truth is, before Dietz, nobody had come up with a solution to this particular problem. Simple doesn’t always mean easy or obvious. fall <strong>2018</strong> 9
Page 1 and 2: SWEET BRIAR COLLEGE
Page 3 and 4: Fall 2018, Vol. 88, No. 2 This maga
Page 5 and 6: Students from across the curriculum
Page 7 and 8: THE ARTS Carrie Brown teaching “T
Page 9: FACULTY PROFILE CORE 110: Design Th
Page 13 and 14: ALUMNAE PROFILE In this picture, ta
Page 15 and 16: ALUMNAE PROFILE working in Sweet Br
Page 17 and 18: ON THE QUAD A group of Sweet Briar
Page 19 and 20: MEET THE CLASS OF 2022 ON THE QUAD
Page 21 and 22: ON THE QUAD The weekend came with t
Page 23 and 24: ON THE QUAD fall 2018 21
Page 25 and 26: ON THE QUAD ALUMNAE SURVEY OVERVIEW
Page 27 and 28: ON THE QUAD Sweet Work Weeks, which
Page 29 and 30: ALUMNAE PROFILE experience that was
Page 31 and 32: ALUMNAE PROFILE Sweet Briar taught
Page 33 and 34: ALUMNAE PROFILE “My parents are t
Page 35 and 36: HISTORY Quad Road in 1935 I was als
Page 37 and 38: GIVING 2018-19 Sweet Briar Fund Pri
Page 39 and 40: • Successfully implement 10 new c
Page 41 and 42: ALUMNAE BRIEFS Alumnae Artists Come
Page 43 and 44: ecologists in exploring the chemica
Page 45 and 46: CLASSnotes 1947 Linda McKoy Stewart
Page 47 and 48: there and doing things in town as w
Page 49 and 50: Karen Steinhardt Kirkbride is delig
Page 51 and 52: dear friend. ou may remember that s
Page 53 and 54: Richmond’s Class of ‘60 met for
Page 55 and 56: MLHA with sons 40 years apart at se
Page 57 and 58: much of the summer there, and also
Page 59 and 60: sister and her husband who live on
Page 61 and 62:
Catherine Porter ’68 with classma
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percentage was higher (looks good o
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next Memorial Day. Mimi continues t
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Happy hour Friday night, Reunion 20
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heading back to smoke in Montana. D
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equipment, toys, and games once aga
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Cassandra Smitth Babbitt and Becky
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you for being true SBC Sisters! Kee
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so from what we knew, but I do try
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1983 celebrating the marriage of He
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Dianne Hayes Doss ’93 on a family
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Stephanie Pearson Davis and family
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ing my new work! Looking forward to
Page 87 and 88:
Ashlee Mays Kidd ‘09 with her hus
Page 89 and 90:
Eleftheria Treklas ’12. Katherine
Page 91 and 92:
Start Planning Your Legacy In 1899,
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Sweet Briar College Magazine - Fall 2018

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