Brown and White Vol. 132 no. 19

              The Brown and White Vol. 132 No. 19
Friday, April 21, 2017 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Admission rate at an all time low
Sir Ken Robinson discusses creativity in the classroom
By KAYLA SIPPIN
Assistant News Editor
For accepted class of 2021, 35% represent diversity
Lehigh’s acceptance rate has fallen
for the third consecutive year.
Interim vice provost of admissions
Bruce Bunnick said the acceptance
rate for the class of 2021 was 24.7,
1.6 percentage points lower than the
class of 2020. Bunnick said one factor
that influences the acceptance rate
is the quality of students that apply
to Lehigh. The selectivity increased
because of the high number and qual-ity
of applicants.
Bunnick said highly-qualified stu-dents
come from a variety of back-grounds,
have a passion for knowl-edge
and display leadership capabil-ities.
Lehigh’s definition of “highly
qualified” doesn’t necessarily mean
students who have a high GPA or
high test scores, but Bunnick said
these are considered in the deci-sion-
making process.
Jennifer Castro, the director
of diversity recruitment and Jade
Eggleston, the assistant director, said
35 percent of the students accepted to
the class of 2021 represent diversity,
of which 10 percent are international
students and 25 percent are students
of color.
“The biggest thing with our pro-gramming
is all about access,”
Eggleston said. “A lot of times, these
students don’t have the means to get
here and have never heard of Lehigh
before.”
Another factor that influences the
acceptance rate is the proportion of
students who apply for the early deci-
By LAURYN RAGONE
Associate News Editor
A revolution is occurring in edu-cation.
The importance of the human-ities,
science, technology, engineer-ing
and mathematics is a never-ending
debate among educators.
Finding a creative balance between
moving students’ feet and solving
algorithms is commonly dismissed
in the classroom.
Sir Ken Robinson, a world-re-nowned
speaker on creativity in
education, spoke at Lehigh on
Tuesday as a part of the College of
Education’s Distinguished Lecture
Series: Leaders of Practice.
Robinson is best known for hav-ing
the most viewed TED Talk of all
time, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?”
His lecture in Baker Hall, titled
“Creative Schools: Revolutionizing
Education from the Ground Up,”
focused on engaging students by
implementing creative and person-alized
methods.
Kate Morrell/B&W Staff
Sir Ken Robinson takes questions during a classroom session with Lehigh faculty, students and
Lehigh Valley administrators and teachers Tuesday in Zoellner Arts Center. Robinson came to
speak as part of the College of Education’s “Distinguished Lecture Series: Leaders of Practice.”
“Dance is as important as math-ematics,”
Robinson said to the fac-ulty,
students and Lehigh Valley
administrators and teachers who
gathered in the audience.
Robinson said dance education
offers a different way to communi-cate
with others and improve rela-tionships
between genders. He also
said it is an effective technique
to teach students about different
cultures.
“The real principle that gov-erns
human ability is diversity,”
Robinson said. “We have all kinds
of abilities across different disci-plines
and fields.”
Robinson said he believes every
school should be different because
the world is a community of learn-ers,
and diversity is an important
base to facilitate learning. He said
the current educational system
promotes a particular view of aca-demic
intelligence, which empha-sizes
increased output and gradu-ation
rates.
Robinson thinks education in the
classroom should shift away from
an artificial learning environment
to a more diverse environment,
which would accommodate all
types of student learning.
Robinson said great learning
happens in groups. Although edu-cators
put increasing emphasis on
See ACCEPTANCE Page 3
sion programs versus regular deci-sion.
Bunnick said one of his goals is
to attract students with diverse back-grounds
who are underrepresented
outside of the mid-Atlantic.
Director of international recruit-ment
Morgan Volkart said this is
a long-term goal for Lehigh admis-sions.
When Volkart looks for prospective
international students, she said she
wants students who know why they
See ROBINSON Page 4
Anna Simoneau/B&W Staff