Letter from the Executive Director

Shortly after last year's NITLE Summit, I wrote a letter to the community about NITLE's re-commitment to helping liberal arts colleges integrate inquiry, pedagogy, and technology. The letter focused on making transparent the "how's" underlying this renewed mission.

In this letter, I want to explore the "why's." Why does liberal education matter, and why must liberal arts colleges integrate inquiry, pedagogy, and technology?

Let me start with principles. First, creativity matters. It is the engine that drives the train. We know that creative destruction is essential for innovation to occur; new creativity destroys the old, allowing more effective approaches to key challenges to emerge. The need for creativity and creative destruction is especially relevant in an increasingly knowledge-based economy and in the face of our most intractable problems: energy & climate, water, poverty, education, effective citizenship and leadership...the list goes on.

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