CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING

Cornell University Course and University Orientation

Invited Lectures

Science Sifting book

General Audience and Professional Workshops

An important component of my work is teaching students, business and science professionals, and general audiences how to overcome their problems and roadblocks using contemplative and other tools.   These are tools I have successfully used in my own career and they are fully teachable.  I first developed these in association with an award-winning Cornell University course. But now with the help of my wife, Janice Dietert, these tools and problem solving strategies  are offered at Cornell’s orientation for new students and through a variety of public workshops of varying durations (see the workshop page).

The tools I teach include: meditation, embodied cognition, role playing, lateral thinking, sleep-based problem solving, dream networking, journaling, synchronicities, 3-D modeling, use of improve, role playing, concept mapping , body awareness touring, and use of hobbies.

These tools can help you:

1) facilitate creative thinking, 2) increase the opportunities for research and business innovation, 3) enhance conscious awareness, 4) facilitate team building and 5) help with transitions across the lifelong career.

Examples of unexpected moments of society-altering discoveries are well-known.
    - Tesla's remarkable breakthrough of the alternating current motor
    - Fleming's discovery of penicillin
    - Madame Currie's identification of radioactivity and radioactive elements
   
Cornell University has a rich history of research, technological and educational innovations.
    - Barbara McClintock and "jumping genes"
    - Carl Sagan and planetary exploration
    - Joseph Novak and concept maps
    - William Keeton and homing behavior in pigeons
    - Hans Bethe and discoveries in theoretical physics
    - Colin Campbell and his famous nutritionally-based China Study 
    - Tom Eisner and chemical signals among insects
    - James Maas and his revolutionary sleep program
    - L. C. Norris and the discovery of vitamin B-12
    - Margaret Bynoe and her recent discoveries that have unlocked the blood-brain barrier

Watch this site as new creative thinking initiative educational activities are announced.