Lab Atlanta Receives Educational Leadership Grant and Leadership Atlanta Endorsement by laura deisley
Director of Strategic Innovation Lovett’s innovative semester school for tenth graders will open
January 2017 in Midtown. Offering an honors-level academic program within a highly diverse, experiential, and high-touch community-based design, Lab Atlanta will be the first of its kind in the country. Students from Lovett and other area public and private schools who are accepted to Lab Atlanta will be immersed in the city—with its people and its leaders— developing civic leadership skills and building and sharing innovation strategies for its vibrant and sustainable future. In affirmation of the model, Leadership Atlanta announced in November its partnership in establishing Lab Atlanta as the high school model for civic engagement. This partnership allows Lab Atlanta students to be mentored by LEAD and/or Leadership Atlanta alumni. Pat Upshaw-Monteith, President and CEO, has also joined the Lab Atlanta Advisory Board. Lab Atlanta’s initial funding was made possible by the extraordinary support of the Lovett community and the Edward E. Ford Foundation. The Foundation challenged the school to create a disruptive model of teaching and learning that is connected to the city and potentially replicable around the country. In early June, after raising $597,000 in matching funds, Lovett received a $250,000 Educational
Leadership Grant from the Foundation. Laura Deisley, Lovett’s Director of Strategic Innovation, serves as Lab Atlanta’s Founding Director and is leading the development alongside Associate Director Mike Pardee (from Rice University) and three founding faculty members: Agnes Browning, Karl Hwang, and Aretina Hamilton. In addition to Leadership Atlanta, some of the strategic partners include Dr. Carl DiSalvo and Georgia Tech’s Public Design Workshop; Dr. Gregory Ellison of Emory University and founder of Fearless Dialogues; Diana Laufenberg,
Executive Director of Inquiry Schools; and Jaimie Cloud of The Cloud Institute. Applications will be accepted from current tenth graders until December 1 for the upcoming spring semester. Current ninth graders will receive information this fall about opportunities to apply for Fall 2017 or Spring 2018. For more information, please visit www.labatlanta.org.
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