Rich Haglund is the Founder of Athademic. In this capacity, he acts on behalf of the Chair of Sage Leadership Partners, securing systemic citywide partnerships in addition to overseeing Sage Leadership's national outreach to Academic All-Americans and Sports Management Executives. Rich recently led his Tennessee State Board of Education colleagues in a complete rewrite of the State Board's Master Plan for PreK-12 education in the State. Access to rigorous, relevant curriculum, delivered by skilled educators, is important to Rich for two reasons: (1) his children will soon begin their formal education (including Charlie, pictured above), and (2) Rich knows that the capacity to be a lifelong learner is the key to him succeeding in the smorgasbord of jobs he expects to have before reaching his ultimate career goal: Commissioner of Major League Baseball. An avid Ultimate player, Rich believes that philosophy, relationships and life in general are best explained through sports metaphors (see., e.g., his article on Title IX and college football).
Rich Haglund, J.D. Founder, Athademic General Counsel, Tennessee State Board of Education B.A. Philosophy & Political Science with distinction, cum laude, Boston University J.D. Vanderbilt University School of Law Languages: German (fluent) http://www.state.tn.us/sbe rich@sageleadership.org
Any academic discipline through sports
My pathway to open source teaching By Rich Haglund, J.D., Deputy to the Board
When I was eight or nine years old, my parents gave me a book with suggested questions to ask when visiting museums, power plants, hospitals and other places that might be of interest.
A few years later, a friend's mother told me that if I became a doctor, I could marry her daughter. So, I volunteered at a children's hospital and spent time in a sports medicine clinic, talking to doctors and therapists. After high school chemistry and physics, I decided writing for Sports Illustrated was a better career goal (I'm not sure the daughter liked me, anyway). So, I took AP English and, when I was in college, talked to former writers for Sports Illustrated.
I eventually realized that my ultimate goal was to become commissioner of major league baseball. I learned that one commissioner, the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, had been a university president before being named commissioner, so I secured a part-time job working in the president's office of the university I was attending. Working there I discovered that university presidents spend a lot of time soliciting donations.
In law school, I decided I wanted to work in education law. So, I talked with the university's general counsel about his work. That conversation led to a summer job and my participation on a committee auditing the university's athletic program. Talking to a fellow student about his writing for an education law publication helped me secure a writing job during school and, eventually, my current job with the State Board of Education.
Unfortunately, most children do not have access to expert knowledge through their social or educational networks. Nor do they have parents or other mentors who will help them see immediate relevance of what they are studying by exploring their interests in real-world applications.
Open source learning - in its pre-Internet, "analog" form - has taught me what I need to study and why. Informational interviews with experts in various fields have enabled me to make a living doing things that I am passionate about. Open source teaching can be the means for students - particularly those who might not be part of social and educational networks like mine - to find out what interests them and to understand what they need to do to pursue those interests.
Open source teaching can be the means to help some student decide she wants to pursue existential philosophy or to tinker with the designated hitter rule. Or both. Open source teaching can help more students be able to act for themselves, rather than to be acted upon by the flattening of the world and other circumstances which they cannot control.
And it may give me the opportunity to have (or at least hear) an informational interview with the Commissioner.
