Please note: Today’s Learning Commons Dedication at 2pm is moving ahead as scheduled.
“The good ideas that underlie most of the great changes in our society…. have roots in the open kind of information commons of the university or the British coffeehouse. … In those environments, ideas are free to connect with each other and build on top of each other…that remixing is really where great ideas happen.” - Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
“….. innovation is usually a group effort…. only in storybooks do inventions come like a thunderbolt, or a lightbulb popping out of the head of a lone individual in a basement …. or garage.”– Walter Isaacson, The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
This afternoon, in our 120th year anniversary as Cleveland’s law school, we are making history…. again.
If anniversaries are a good time to reflect on what we have done well, they’re also a time to advance our law school and set new goals. Today, we are bringing together the best of the physical and digital to create a 21st century learning hub that makes C|M|Law even more distinctive, relevant, and innovative.
Thanks to the vision and generosity of Judy and Bob Rawson, and the leadership of CSU President Ronald Berkman,former C|M|Law Dean Craig Boise, and our Law Library Director, Professor Lauren Collins, a national expert on the creative use of law library spaces, this afternoon we will open our new Judy and Robert H. Rawson, Jr. Learning Commons.
It is anything but common. Our new Rawson Learning Commons makes us one of the few law schools in the nation with a state-of-the-art learning space that will encourage exploration, creation, and collaboration between students, faculty, staff, and the broader community.
In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin's Club of Honest Whigs would meet at the London Coffeehouse in London to shoot around their ideas. What the coffeehouse did for the Age of Enlightenment, the Learning Commons will make for the Age of New Learning.
Just as Cleveland State University is, in many ways, a university without walls that uses the city as our classroom, so too will the Learning Commons be a learning space without walls. We’ve not built a library space from 30 years ago. Tall book stacks will be not be seen and “Shhhhh” will not often be heard.
Our Rawson Learning Commons is a 6,500 square foot space on the second floor of our nationally acclaimed Law Library. It has a recording studio where a student can record practicing an interview or presentation, new study rooms which are shared digital spaces with touch screen monitors, and a large smart monitor screen for live streaming and showing films.
There is a flexible furniture configuration which includes group seating in colorful custom made pods, some equipped with whiteboard tabletops on which students can quickly record their thoughts and ideas and then capture a photo for future use. The Learning Commons features striking professional city photography by Judy Rawson, and was designed by Bostwick Design Partnership and the CSU Architect's Office.
Think of the new C|M|Law Learning Commons as a place for student-centered, collaborative learning rather than classroom-style information transfer learning. It will be less like an information store where students get things and more like a collaborative kitchen where they make things and shape their own learning experiences.
Today, we are taking a giant step forward in making C|M|Law the uncommon law school with a 21st century Learning Commons.
My best,
Lee