Cultivating Creativity in Students is Lecture Topic at MCCC Sept. 28

WEST WINDSOR – Why today’s students write the way they do and how to get them out of a formulaic rut will be the topic of lecture at Mercer County Community College, with a noted professor and author leading the discussion.

“Cultivating Curiosity and Creativity in an Era of Standardization” will be the subject of a lecture by Ann Jurecic, Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University and co-author of Habits of the Creative Mind, at noon on Wednesday, Sept.28 in the Communications Building, Room 109. Her talk is the first of MCCC’s fall 2016 Distinguished Lecture Seriesat the West Windsor Campus, 1200 Old Trenton Road. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Jurecic will discuss the reasons that writing by today’s college student is different from generations past, namely how standardized testing in grades K-12 shapes the student experience – and trains them to write by formula, thus depriving them of the habits that form the foundation of a college education. She will offer insight on how to teach today’s students to practice foundational habits of mind: attentiveness, curiosity, creativity, openness, engagement, persistence, and reflectiveness.

In addition to co-authoring Habits of the Creative Mind with Richard E. Miller, Jurecic is the author of Illness as Narrative, which charts the emergence of personal writing about illness in the 20th century. After its publication, Jurecic became a book columnist for the British medical journal The Lancet. She earned her Ph. D. in English from Princeton University, and holds a M.A.T from Brown University and a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College.

For more information on MCCC’s Distinguished Lecture Series, call (609) 570-3324 or visit www.mccc.edu/events.