Award-winning author Michelle Weise to be Indiana Tech 2024 commencement speaker

March 20, 2024

Nationally renowned author and higher education leader Dr. Michelle R. Weise will be Indiana Tech’s commencement speaker during the university’s annual commencement celebration on Saturday, May 11, at Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne. During the ceremony, which will begin at 12:30 p.m., Dr. Weise will be recognized with an honorary doctorate for her contributions to Indiana Tech and to the field of higher education.

Dr. Weise (pronounced W-ice) is the author of Long-Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet (Wiley, 2021). Her book was awarded the 2021 Phillip E. Frandson Award for Literature by UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association), recognizing the author and publisher of an outstanding work of continuing higher education literature. Thinkers50 named her one of 30 management and leadership thinkers in the world to watch in 2021.

Dr. Weise leads Rise & Design, an advisory service tailored for organizations seeking to design education and workforce strategies that will prepare working-age adults for the jobs of today and tomorrow. In this consulting role, she has worked with Indiana Tech’s leadership, faculty and staff over the past two years, advising their work to develop strategies and tactics for the university to develop best-in-class student support services for students of all ages.

In the past, Dr. Weise has served as vice chancellor of strategy and innovation at National University System, and senior advisor at Imaginable Futures, a venture of The Omidyar Group. She was also the chief innovation officer of Strada Education Network as well as of Southern New Hampshire University. With Clayton Christensen, she coauthored Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution (2014) while leading the higher education practice at Christensen’s Institute for Disruptive Innovation.

Her service work includes advising BrightHive, a data collaboration platform, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), the SkillUp Coalition, Basta, Hitch, Bayes Impact, Clayton Christensen Institute Social Capital R&D Project, and World Education’s Personal and Workplace Success Skills Library. She has also served as a commissioner for then-Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning, Harvard University’s Task Force on Skills and Employability, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education.

Her commentaries on redesigning higher education and developing more innovative workforce and talent pipeline strategies have been featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review and on PBS NewsHour.

Dr. Weise is a former Fulbright Scholar and a graduate of Harvard and Stanford.

Indiana Tech President Dr. Karl Einolf commented, “Dr. Weise is an expert and important leader in the work of higher education to redesign the educational experience to meet the needs of working-age adults. Her work is helping institutions across the country develop more innovative workforce and talent pipeline strategies to better serve workers and industry alike. Her work with Indiana Tech and other universities is enabling more students to pursue and achieve greater levels of success. All of us at Indiana Tech are grateful for the impact of her work on the students we serve, and look forward to welcoming her to our commencement celebration in May.”

Indiana Tech’s commencement ceremony is free and open to all Indiana Tech students, families, alumni and the public. No tickets are required.