Dr. Graham Glynn is a neuroscientist interested in how people learn. He is also a technophile with a passion for using technology to extend the capabilities of the human mind. In 2002 these interests led him to create a software company that developed personal knowledge management software called Knowledge Workshop that sold in over forty countries. This software was designed around information science and knowledge management principles to help manage the overwhelming amount of information that today’s professionals are expected to know and use. His current project, called the Sentient initiative, was begun in 2015 and combines these knowledge management principles with a concept mapping and modelling approach that emulates how the brain stores and retrieves information by creating associations between thoughts. The Sentient Knowledge Map (SKM) is the embodiment and a practical implementation of this approach and accompanies this book.
Following a post-doctoral fellowship in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Glynn gained wide experience working in multiple Higher Education settings and types of institutions spanning big research institutions like Penn State University and Stony Brook University, and regional comprehensives, private, state, religious and minority serving institutions, and in professional schools. He also completed a sabbatical at the British Open University, at the time the largest provider of online education in the World. Subsequently, he was instrumental in starting the World’s first online school of Pharmacy at Creighton University. He has led numerous re-accreditation and strategic planning processes and served on several institutional accreditation review teams.
In his academic career Dr. Glynn capitalized on his interests in learning science and technology by helping his peer faculty develop teaching and learning skills. He is responsible for founding and leading several faculty development centers at universities across the United States. As his administrative responsibilities broadened from these development roles it was natural to apply these skills to management and leadership endeavors and peer manager development. As a trained scientist he has, to the extent possible, incorporated data and modelling into his decision-making approach. However, while serving as the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at two large universities, he discovered that the tools and systems needed to support this approach in complex organizations like HEIs are sorely lacking. In particular, tools and approaches to help plan and run the institution with an integrated approach and to support transparent knowledge-informed decision making were non-existent. He, therefore, set out to create such an approach.
He also felt that many of the projects he was working on had aspects of reinventing the wheel and that other institutions had likely “been there and done that.” With his background in peer development, he, therefore, created the Higher Education Leadership Learning Online (HELLO) community Https://www.HelloCommunity.net as a place where institutional leaders could network, share experience, resources, and good practices. For more information about him please visit https://GrahamGlynn.com.
