In Focus | Susan Crichton of the Innovative Learning Centre at UBCO

In Focus is our gift to the community. A way for us to help show our recognition for the people, businesses and organizations that help make our city great. The team at KelownaNow.com is passionate about this community and the people that make it amazing. We want to show our friends, neighbours, family and colleagues that we notice them and the fabulous things that they do.

What is your name?
Susan Crichton

What do you always find yourself saying?
… so, what else could we do …

If you could spend one whole day with anyone in the world who is currently alive, who would you select and why?
Bill Gates --- he remains the richest man in the world and co-established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They are doing amazing work, and I’d like to speak with him, at length, about how we might establish small, grass roots grants and support for the complete “eco-system” of education … small-scale community activism, health, sanitation, and learning. Education is such a boutique, craftspersonship enterprise – a contextually specific endeavour … so small is beautiful and I’d like to talk with him about how we could support small-scale, locally relevant, scalability activities that would really make a difference. We need to work with people rather than do things for people – this takes slow, steady, contextually informed work.

If you were to receive any existing public award, what award would you like to win?
I’m not much of an individual award person … I have to say I’m really only interested in recognitions that would help to move innovations in education forward in such a way that they would support issues of social justice and encourage creativity and imagination for learners of all ages. So, basically attention that would foster access to support and funding to do good work. I’m absolutely engaged and enthralled with the Maker movement as a way of fostering innovation and creativity – so any award that celebrate my work on that and help us develop a Makerspace here in the Okanagan would please me!

If you could spend a day with any historical figure, who would you choose and why?
Gandhi or Martin Luther King … their strength, vision, clarity and seemingly unwavering commitment to the GOOD are inspiring. They would able to focus and stay true to vision, and they appeared to be relentlessly optimistic and positive.

Who inspires you?
The most recent winners of the Noble Peace prize. Both of those amazing people, in their own ways, have shown the world that change is possible and that education is the foundation for sustainable, global peace – people have to be have an opportunity to learn to think and learn.

What are three things on your bucket list?
Attend the Indian Wells Tennis Tournament
Explore the southern tip of Chile / Argentina – Patagonia
Continue to work with colleagues in East Africa

If you had an enormous yacht, what would you name it?
Excess …. As in this is an excessively stupid thing to own … HA!

If you could foresee a single day of your future in its entirety, what date would you select?
The opening day for a World Economic Forum in Davos, when the leaders announce that the global budget for education was equal or greater than the global budget for military expenditure.

What are you passionate about?
Education as a way to foster peace, enhance creativity and innovation and support the development of a civil society

What has been your favourite day of your life, up to this point?
The day my husband, Ian, and I hiked with friends in Bhutan and had a simple picnic in one of the most peaceful, beautiful places on earth! Good friends, fabulous setting … hanging out in with the person you love and getting to do that in paradise – all good.

What has been your proudest accomplishment?
Receiving UBC Okanagan’s Teaching and Innovation award last year that required the nomination of colleagues and students and community … I was amazed. It took so much time for people to complete the nomination process … humbling. It also came at a critical time in our Faculty’s evolution so it was confirmation of the importance of a Faculty of Education in a research intensive university such as UBC.

Where is your favourite place to dine in Kelowna? What do you like about it?
RAUDZ … local food, beautifully prepared, and offered in a comfortable, non-intimidating environment

What is your favourite activity or event in Kelowna? Why?
Tennis in the summer at the Mission Tennis Club … the perfect place on a summer’s evening. The hard working volunteers who run MTC make it a little piece of paradise. Now, if we could figure a way of having an indoor option there … life would be perfect!

What is the name of your business/organization?
Innovative Learning Centre (ILC), which is part of the Faculty of Education at UBC Okanagan

What does your business/organization do?
With the fabulous support of collaborators / colleagues - Deb Carter and Bill Latta and the ILC Board of Directors (http://innovativelearningcentre.ca/about/ilc-advisory-committee/), we imagine and build the future of education. Specifically, we have been working to develop physical and virtual spaces to support studio-based learning. We also get to work with amazing people in the start up sector in Kelowna – primarily folks who are in Accelerate Okanagan. We also spend a huge amount of our time and energy working with educators to Take Making Into the Schools – both locally, provincially and internationally.

Where can people find you or your business online?
education.ok.ubc.ca
innovativelearningcentre.ca

How do people connect with you on Linkedin?
https://www.linkedin.com/

Where can people find your business on Facebook?
Susan Crichton

What is your Twitter account?
@crichtos and @ubcoilc

What is your mission?
To design and develop places / spaces to explore, create, and experience innovations in pedagogical excellence . . .
To explore, observe and participate within places / spaces to further scholarship, research and community engagement . . .
To, mindfully building the future of learning together . . . with members of the community, education and academia.

If you could achieve one thing within your field, what would it be?
Foster curiosity and imagination in the hearts and minds of learners who have been disenfranchised from the joy of learning and making

Where do you want your business/organization to be in five years?
I’d love the ILC to be recognized as an open place (virtual and physical) for inspiration and good ideas that will make a difference. The ILC has taken the lead in exploring innovative learning environments and Taking Making into the Schools through its exploration of learning spaces and its development of immersive professional learning for educators.

Who do you consider to be a forerunner within your field?
Mitch Resnick at Lifelong Kindergarten at the Media Lab at MIT

What three qualities do you feel that your business/organization exemplifies?
Innovation
Curiosity
Capacity for risk taking

What would you like to say to your employees/volunteers?
Dream big and make those dreams happen

How does your business/organization impact the community?
The work of the ILC informs teaching and learning at UBC Okanagan, and it impacts schools and post secondary institutions local, nationally and globally. The ILC works closely with many start up and local entrepreneurs to imagine learning tools, apps, and approaches. We share our thinking and spaces with the community, and we work collaboratively to enhance people’s ideas that have the potential to make significant change.

If you were trapped in an elevator with several wealthy investors from any field, which field would you want them to be experts in? What would say to them/talk about?
I’d love those people to be technology entrepreneurs with a social activist bent who have access to money. I’d talk about sustainable ways we can make change for learners in challenging contexts … change that would enable those learners to make a difference in their own lives and communities.

If I could change one thing about Kelowna, it would be:
The overall look and feel of Highway 97 … it just looks BAD! The second, and I know you didn’t ask, is to remove the extra parts of the docks that extend right onto the beach between city park and the hospital. You can’t even stroll pleasantly along that stunning beach with having to climb over parts of them. Docks need to stop at the water’s edge …

What do you think makes Kelowna great?
The environment, place, and the people who have made this their home.

My choice for the Kelowna In Focus spotlight is:
Walley Lightbody

Some general comments I would like to share are:
I end my emails with the signature statement – None of us is as smart as all of us. I truly believe that. Kelowna is a terrific community that can pull together to make this a GREAT community – environmentally, socially, aesthetically. We need to be in this together and ensure that continued development and change, impacts ALL of us in positive ways.

We encourage you to leave your comments and words of support below, and submit your own nomination by clicking HERE. You are also welcome to submit a form of your own by clicking HERE. Thank you, Kelowna!