Kaplan Institute - Grand Opening - Ribbon Cutting Remarks

Grand Opening Press Conference 

Remarks of Executive Director Howard Tullman

WATCH THE VIDEO:
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I want to start by advising those of you sitting on the Pitch that your seat cushions can be used as flotation devices in the event of a water landing during our flight. All kidding aside, as we formally open the Kaplan Institute today, the flight imagery couldn’t be more appropriate.

This is a place originally envisioned by our past President John Anderson as a launching pad where our student entrepreneurs and innovators could have their ideas take shape, their businesses be born, and ultimately their dreams come true. Dreams aggressively driven by a concrete commitment to the hard and ceaseless work needed to change our communities, our city and the world for the better. The basic culture of Kaplan couldn’t be simpler or clearer: you don’t get what you wish for, you get what you work for.

Along with Presidents Anderson and Cramb, Ed Kaplan (and the many others who have helped to make their vision into a reality) imagined an interdisciplinary institute combining all the resources of the university in a single place that would help to more fully equip and enable our graduates to enter the working world with the skills and talents necessary to succeed tomorrow in an environment where the only constant is change. 

Besides a solid technical grounding, the critical skills for the “new collar” economy include effective communication, empathetic leadership, a tolerance for ambiguity and goalless planning, a digital-first mindset, and an appreciation for the criticality of human-centered design in all we do. This is why we are so excited to have the Institute of Design here as a major part of the Kaplan Institute. The possibilities for collaboration, interactions, and serendipity are endless. And I want to acknowledge Vic Morgenstern’s extraordinary contributions in making ID’s return to the main campus a reality.

The vexing challenges of the future won’t be neatly packaged or suitable for silos; they will demand cross-disciplinary skills and team-based solutions that extinguish the boundaries between many disciplines and combine the best thinking and strategies of our students and faculty into unique and game-changing solutions.

One thing we know for sure is that no one today does anything important all by themselves. I’m proud to be building a new team here at KI including my Deputy Director Barbara Pollack and Jeremy Alexis who will head up our new, re-imagined and reinvigorated iPRO programs. We’re excited that Kaplan (working closely with faculty and students from our Engineering school) will host some of the exciting new VR visualization and planning technologies developed by Dassault Systemes of France – one of our newest corporate partners – and that we will be providing new Magic Leap MR equipment to our students as well thru our ongoing work with AT&T.

The broad and exciting projects we will undertake here (with the support and enthusiastic engagement of both our best faculty and our many business and industry partners) will help us address the serious needs, critical concerns, and enormous challenges ahead for all of us at a time where we‘re surrounded by both instances of enormous abundance and of shocking scarcity – often within the same communities – and at the same time.

Charity, compassion and kindness will help us solve some of these inequities, but ultimately only education and technology will provide the paths forward to real change and access for all to the opportunities that the most fortunate of us see all around. Part of the mission of Kaplan besides educating our own students is to reach out to the communities that surround us and help lift them (and especially their youth) up as well.

This is why we’re so excited to be partnering with several CPS schools including the Dyett High School for the Arts and with the talented engineering teams from Softbank Robotics to expand and offer some of our KI robotics programs to their students. 

Talent is everywhere in our great city, but opportunity and access to crucial resources doesn’t happen by itself. We need to make it happen and we need all of you to help.  

   

And speaking of help, let me introduce two of our newest Kaplan team members from Softbank Robotics. Pepper – can you give us a hand? 

Pepper:

Hello everyone. And thank you Howard! It is great to be here for the opening of the Kaplan Institute. I’m very excited about my new role here. It will be great working with the students to help everyone have a better understanding of robotics.

Howard:
Excellent. Welcome to the team Pepper.

Pepper:

I’m also excited to take my talents to the Chicago Public Schools to help inspire more children to explore science, technology, and other STEM fields.

Howard: That’s great Pepper. Speaking of excitement, let’s cut the ribbon so we can officially open the doors. Can we get some help?


Pepper: Sure Howard. We’re more than happy to help out. (Ribbon is cut, and Pepper claps hands.)