"QUESTions Instead of Answers: A Process-based Curriculum for the Twenty-first Century"

By David J. Helfand, Columbia University & former president, Quest University Canada

The design of Quest University Canada began with a question: How do we create the most effective and engaging education for students who will graduate into a rapidly changing, globalized world? Our answer was to center education around the formulation of good questions and the processes by which one attempts to address them. This leads naturally to having tutors who teach, rather than professors who profess, and to seminar rooms rather than lecture halls. It leads to dissolving disciplinary boundaries so good questions can easily cross them in a student-centered, project-based curriculum of exploration.
David J. Helfand, a faculty member at Columbia University for forty years, served half of that time as Chair of the Department of Astronomy. He is the author of nearly 200 scientific publications and has mentored 22 PhD students, but most of his pedagogical efforts have been aimed at teaching science to non-science majors. In 2005, he became involved in the effort to create Canada’s first independent, non-profit, secular university, Quest University Canada. He served as President & Vice-Chancellor from 2008 to 2015.