OPEN’s Executive Director Deirdre Johnson Burel recently travelled to Tulsa, OK, to serve on the 2015 Brock International Prize in Education jury.

The Brock International Prize in Education recognizes an individual who has made a specific innovation or contribution to the science and art of education, resulting in a significant impact on the practice or understanding of the field of education. The innovation or contribution must be specific and must have the potential to provide long-term benefit to humanity through change and improvement in education at any level, including new teaching techniques, the discovery of learning processes, the organization of a school or school system, the radical modification of government involvement in education, or other innovations.

The 2015 Brock Prize has been awarded to Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Dr. Gardner is best known in the educational world for his theory of “multiple intelligences,” which is based on original research in neuroscience and was first published more than 30 years ago. Gardner’s conception of intelligence as multi-dimensional rather than a singular quality has since become mainstream in the curriculum of schools of education, is the basis for hundreds of books on intelligence and education, and is the foundation for the pedagogy for hundreds of new schools around the world.

The 2015 Brock Prize Symposium will take place on the campus of the University of Tulsa in spring of 2015.