Julio Frenk Joins Incubator for First Immersion Residency

Former Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk, now President of the University of Miami, joined the Incubator for its inaugural immersion residency during the spring and summer of 2015. The residencies, held at the Incubator’s studio space in Harvard Square, enable teachers and students to explore, experiment, and innovate with creative multimedia approaches that inspire novel pedagogy, build multimodal literacies, and contribute to an emerging visual “grammar” for teaching and learning. With support from the Incubator staff, faculty can leverage the digital space to reflect on their own teaching and learning practices.

During his time at the Incubator, Frenk worked with Director Sue J. Goldie and Deputy Director Cherie Ramirez to brainstorm and plan for two versions of the Chan School course, “Fundamental Concepts of Public Health.” The long version of the course is offered as an intensive July summer school class for DrPH students. A shorter adaptation of it was piloted as a four-day mini-course for incoming master’s students during the School’s Orientation Week in August. As part of the immersion residency, Frenk and Goldie developed new curriculum for both courses and created a welcome video for the August students that explains the expectations of and motivations behind the orientation pilot.