Dr. Matthew Wisnioski

Dr. Matthew Wisnioski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society; a senior fellow at the Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology; and an affiliated faculty member of the Departments of History and Engineering Education. He is an interdisciplinary historian and, most recently, the co-editor of Does America Need More Innovators? (MIT 2019), a dialogue among leading champions, critics, and reformers of innovation. For his teaching and mentoring he has received an XCaliber Award for Technology-Assisted Teaching and Learning, a Graduate School Outstanding Mentoring Award, and a CLAHS Excellence in Advising Award. A passionate advocate for interdisciplinary collaboration, he co-created the Human-Centered Design Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program, contributes to a cross-college Innovation minor with his course Innovation in Context (which engages students in collaborative research and public debate), and is a co-PI on the NSF-sponsored Revolutionizing Engineering Departments project in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Throughout these efforts he works to assure that criticality and inclusivity are at the core of interdisciplinary collaboration. His Diggs Teaching Enhancement Project seeks to help those involved in interdisciplinary programs to integrate questions of values, desired outcomes, and objective realities into their teaching. He will organize and lead an interactive workshop that investigates these normative dimensions of pedagogy from in-class activities to cross-college curriculum design. The event will be open to all instructors, but is especially oriented to those with responsibilities in minors and cross-college destination area programs that address the complex interactions of science, technology, and society.The workshop aims to promote reflection and best practices as well as to strengthen networks of communication and dialogue among those undertaking similar projects of critical participation.