Equinox Summit: What will high school look like in 2030?

Alumni who have gone on to be entrepreneurs, current students and faculty from the University of Waterloo are participants at the Equinox Summit: Learning 2030, a Waterloo conference drawing education innovators from around the world.

The future of high school is the focus for this year’s summit, a conference put on every two years by the Waterloo Global Science Initiative (WGSI). Founded in 2009, WGSI is a non-profit partnership between Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and the University of Waterloo. The mandate of WGSI is to promote dialogue around complex global issues and to formulate strategies to support a more sustainable future.

The Equinox Summit brings together experts and young leaders to engage in lectures, plenaries and online presentations and to help advise on issues of global importance. In 2011, innovators and visionaries in the area of clean energy gathered to discuss more renewable ways to provide power to a growing population. The Equinox Blueprint: Energy 2030 spells out a way forward on the energy front.

The conference starts on Sun. Sept. 29 with events running until Thurs. Oct. 3. University of Waterloo participants for the summit include:

• Iyinoluwa Aboyeji a recent Waterloo graduate who is the CEO of Fora, an education startup that provides educational content to Africa’s universities.
• John Baker a Waterloo alumnus and president and CEO of Desire2Learn, a leading educational technology company with offices around the world.
• Ed Jernigan professor and founding director of the Centre for Knowledge Integration at the University of Waterloo.
• Christine McWebb director of academic programs at the University of Waterloo’s Stratford Campus and associate professor of French studies
• Zainab Ramahi student and co-president of the Knowledge Integration Student Society.
• Ian Scholten student, joint honours degree in Knowledge Integration and anthropology.

Summit organizers chose learning, specifically high school education, because global reports show teens have the least engagement in learning.

Everyone is invited to participate. Free tickets and online broadcasts are available for public events.