Michelle is a visionary and a game changer in the field of higher education. During our conversation you’ll learn all about the revolutionary new college that Michelle started from scratch. (Yes, you read that right.) And you’ll learn a simple but effective strategy to help your teen to think critically about what he or she wants to do after high school. Definitely a must-listen episode!
About Michelle Jones
Michelle Jones is the founder and president of Wayfinding Academy, which is a brand new kind of college. She’s been doing this for about four years now. She had never started a college before and didn’t know anybody else who had, so she took a pretty big risk and went out on a limb to do it. It felt like the right thing for her to do after she spent about 15 – 16 years in the traditional higher education system as a professor. Michelle’s background was mostly doing that. From the time she went to college when she was traditional college age, about 18 or 19 years old, she has been in the higher education system ever since. First as a student then as a grad student and then as a faculty member. During that time, Michelle had her own experiences as a student and a faculty member. Then she started hearing a lot of complaints and frustrations mostly from students, sometimes from other staff and faculty about how they felt like college wasn’t actually helping them figure out what they wanted to do with their lives and get ready to start doing it. Michelle agreed. That’s what she thought college should be doing and unfortunately that wasn’t happening for the vast majority of students that she would teach. So after hearing a lot of frustrations for a lot of years, Michelle decided that she could probably do college better. So she set out to design what she thought a better kind of college might look like and then took the leap and started Wayfinding about four years ago.
Episode Highlights
- About the Wayfinding Academy experience
- The matchmaking process for student admissions
- The traits that Wayfinding students have in common
- Parent perspectives on Wayfinding Academy
- The “Five Whys” exercise to get your teens to dig deeper
- The Wayfinding program for adults
- Developing skills around question asking and self-exploration
- Wayfinding Guides play the role of “story catcher”
- Graduates finish with an assoicates degree, a portfolio and connections
- Michelle’s advice to her teenage self
Resources
Wayfinding Academy on Facebook