December 3, 2021

Four Drexel SoE graduate students comprised a student panel for the RDCA SIG (Reisman Diagnostic Creativity Assessment Special Interest Group) event at the virtual 2021 KIE International Conference (July 27-29, 2021). The panel focused their discussion on their individual experiences Using the RDCA as a Diagnostic Investigative Tool to Explore and Understand Creativity Dynamics for Educators, Entrepreneurs, Job Seekers, and the Workplace. The KIE International Conference is an annual event established more than 25 years ago holding conferences in and pulling attendees from all parts of the globe to provide a space for practitioners and subject experts to cross-fertilize ideas and provide insights into emerging issues and challenges particularly in innovation and enterprise, and more recently entrepreneurship and creativity. The 2020 and 2021 conferences were held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic with the 2022 conference planned to occur in Madrid, Spain. Two of the panelists were current students in the SoE’s MS in Creativity & Innovation degree program (Frankie Bonilla and Mitch Marcello) and two were recent graduates of the SoE’s EdD in Leadership and Management degree program (Christine Galib, EdD, and Melissa Schmitz, EdD), whose dissertations had a strong creativity and innovation components.

Creativity and Innovation (C&I) student, Frankie Bonilla, is a School District of Philadelphia educator and founding teacher of The Workshop School, in addition to a seasoned spoken word artist. C&I student, Mitch Marcello, is co-founder of the Acts Network, a Williamsport, PA-based “that intentionally create faith communities outside the traditional walls” that most groups traditionally use to worship, as well as a Director and Consultant of various innovation accelerators, and designer/facilitator of innovation academies to aid North American Christianity in efforts to respond to the COVID-19 Pandemic. EdD program completer, Christine Galib, EdD, completed her doctorate in 2020 and is a systems-thinker and educator who currently serves as the Senior Director of Programs at The Ion, an innovation hub in Houston, TX, as well as designed and directed the USA’s first and only degree-granting entrepreneurship diploma program for high school students. EdD, program completer, Melissa Schmitz, EdD, completed her dissertation the June of 2021. Dr. Schmitz was a music teacher at a public school in Annapolis, MD, but recently transitioned jobs to serve as an Arts Integration Teacher at the Monarch Academy in Annapolis. Emerita Professor, Founder of the School of Education, and Director of the Freddie Reisman Center for Translational Research in Creativity and Motivation, Fredricka Reisman, PhD, chaired the RDCA SIG Panel.

Also, as components of the 2021 KIE International Conference, Larry Keiser, PhD, Program Director for the SoE’s Creativity & Innovation Programs and Co-Director of the Freddie Reisman Center for Translational Research in Creativity and Motivation, chaired both the 7th Annual E. Paul Torrance International Roundtable on Creative Thinking and the 2ndAnnual Kaufman Family Research Symposium conference events. The Torrance International Roundtable was comprised of dual themes in the daylong event. The first was a part two extension of last year’s theme, 70 years of Research into Creativity: Reflections on JP Guilford’s APA Presidential Address. The sessions Keynoters included creativity research gurus, Dr. Scott Isaksen, Founder of the Creative Problem Solving Group in Buffalo, NY, and Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the BI Norwegian Business School, Norway; Dr. Dean Simonton, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Fredricka Reisman, Emerita Professor and Director of the Freddie Reisman Center for Translational Research in Creativity and Motivation at Drexel University. The second theme for the Torrance International Roundtable was, How Can Creativity Provide Innovative Solutions for Communities in Post-Covid Recovery. The Keynoters included Dr. Kobus Neethling, President of the South African Creativity Foundation, founder of the Kobus Neethling Institute, and creator of the Neethling Brain Instruments (NBI), Dr. Todd Lubart, Professor Psychology at the Université de Paris (LaPEA lab), co-author of the EPoC (Evaluation of Potential Creativity) measures of creative potential in children, and President of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation; Dr. Vlad Glăveanu, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology and Counselling at Webster University Geneva, Switzerland, founder and director of the Webster Center for Creativity and Innovation (WCCI), and Associate Professor II at the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology (SLATE), University of Bergen, Norway; and Dr. Pamela Burnard, Professor of Arts, Creativities and Educations at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RDA) UK and the Chartered College of Teaching, UK.

The annual KIE Conference’s Kaufman Family Research Symposium began in 2020 to honor and recognize the unique and extraordinary body of important and life impacting research the Kaufman family has contributed to the world over the last half century in multiple fields. The Symposium seeks to highlight and recognize the best, the most innovative and most intriguing and/or impactful research and researchers occurring in the world today. The theme for the 2021 Kaufman Family Research Symposium chaired by Dr. Larry Keiser was Translating Research to the Field: Probe to Practice. The keynoters for the symposium were Dr. David Turner, President of the Global CIE Forum, Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Business and Society at the University of South Wales, Fellow of the Academy for Social Science, and Honorary Member of the British Association for International and Comparative Education; and Dr. Jennie Kaufman Singer, Professor at California State University, Sacramento, and Clinical Psychology Researcher specializing in mentally ill offenders, sex offenders, international prisons and policing, creativity in confinement, intellectual and achievement assessment and rehabilitation program evaluation.