May Program: Bringing Humanities into Training
Scott Crawford, Director of Professional Development and Training at Member One Federal Credit Union
Research supports the need to address multiple learning styles. Research also shows that finding relationships between seemingly unrelated disciplines can spark innovation and creativity. However, so often educational institutions hide within an academic silo of sorts that segregates disciplines into departments and rarely bridges the perceived gaps between disciplines. The world of business in regard to professional development and training tends to follow this model. However, a humanities-rich learning environment allows for an educational culture to develop better aligned with research related to how people learn best. This pedagogy also allows for more interaction among participants and a learning experience that is, in short, fun! B. Scott Crawford will share strategies related to interdisciplinary, humanities-based instruction related to his work at Member One Federal Credit Union. While related to finance and business, these strategies will have obvious relationships that can be applied to literally any field!
May Program Special Feature - Toastmasters Demo - Dealing with Difficult Participants!
Marie Bliss will attempt to conduct a short demo training, while several members of the audience will model difficult classroom personalities. After the training, fellow Toastmaster and former ASTD member, Kathy Reynolds will lead a brief feedback session to examine how well Marie addressed the challenging behaviors. This promises to be fun and educational.
Speaker Bio:
B. Scott Crawford has almost twenty years of experience in education in numerous educational environments. He has taught at the high school and college levels, including Virginia Western Community College, Radford University, and Virginia Tech, as well as serving as the Social Studies Coordinator for Roanoke City Public Schools, K-12, from 2003-2006. Scott has also served as the Director of Education for the Art Museum of Western Virginia and then Taubman Museum of Art from 2006-2009. Currently, while continuing to serve as an adjunct instructor at VWCC, Scott is the Director of Professional Development for Member One Federal Credit Union. In this capacity, he and his team have created a unique training program that is humanities-based. Interdisciplinary learning is a passion of Scott’s, and Member One has proven to be a phenomenal platform to build on this pedagogy, as dance, the fine arts, poetry, literature, history, music and philosophy come to bear on financial and business topics and themes. In this manner, traditional business training becomes engaging, more participant-focused, and allows for differentiated instruction addressing multiple learning styles. Scott has several publications related to his work in history and in education, and he is currently moving forward with a publication related to a work of art in the National Gallery that was assigned an inaccurate title by the museum in the early 1980s. He is also working on a book related to his research on a painting by Lilly Martin Spencer found in the Taubman Museum of Art. Scott continues to present at state, national and international conferences and has presented information related to interdisciplinary education at Harvard University through the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
