Presentations
Professor Ruggiero has made dozens of keynote and featured presentations at national and international conferences. On three occasions, his presentations have subsequently been published in Vital Speeches of the Day. Following are his current presentations. (For other topics, including those specifically tailored to an occasion or audience, contact Professor Ruggiero.)
For General Audiences:
The Practice of Loving Kindness
Making Your Mind Matter
The Layperson's Role in Educational Reform
Making Minds Matter: An Immodest Proposal for Educational Reform
Making Minds Matter in the Workplace
For Educators:
Teaching Ethics Across the Curriculum
Teaching Thinking Across the Curriculum
Improving Students' Attitudes
Following are typical audience reactions to Professor Ruggiero's presentations:
Vincent Ryan Ruggiero has the ability to make difficult
material comprehensible to the layman. His thoughtful, carefully organized
speeches are presented as an artful blend of wit and well-chosen, illuminating
examples . . . He also possesses a personal warmth and sincerity which
his audiences and colleagues find very appealing.
Dr. Charles Bonwell, Founding
President, Intellectual Skills
Development Association and Professor of
History, Southeast
Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau,
MO
I am delighted to learn that your future plans encompass
sharing your expertise in the broad field of economic development with
other communities as you did recently with us. Your leadership in outlining
the importance of establishing necessary priorities in this field and
your obviously outstanding competence in bringing about group consensus
and direction have been greatly appreciated.
Neal R. Fosseen, retired bank president
and former mayor
of Spokane, WA
A competitive business environment pressures our employees
to move quickly to the marketplace and be more oriented to customer service.
Critical thinking is a crucial element of responding effectively in such
conditions. Your presentations at the April breakfast panel discussion
[were valuable]. I appreciated your point that critical thinking is a
key way not to learn but also to produce the success American business
needs. Please include this endorsement in your portfolio so that others
may know of my gratitude to you for your research, synthesis, and exposition.
David D. Despart, Branch Mgr, Marketing
& Service, IBM,
San Francisco
I cannot begin to tell you how much of an impact your
message had on our people. Teaching critical and creative thinking skills
is sure to become a new direction for our college, and you certainly helped
to light the fire. Thank you.
John W. Pruitt, Director, Student Programs
and Resources,
Eastfield College, Mesquite, TX
Your keynote address was both substantive and entertaining.
Your lively, always articulate delivery brought knowing nods and delighted
chuckles. Our dean, for example, commented afterwards that you had given
the best address he'd heard in a long tradition of General Faculty meetings-well-organized,
easy to grasp, with each point wittily yet tellingly illustrated.
Dr. Barbara J. Millis, Assistant Dean,
Faculty Development,
University College, The University of Maryland
Everyone found you to be a lively and engaging speaker
. . . It's a difficult task to speak to faculty whose expertise ranges
from anthropology to zoology. You kept them all interested not only in
your subject but in how they might apply your ideas to their own areas.
There's no question that your time with us was successful.
Dr. Thomas Lisk, Associate Dean, University
of South Carolina
at Sumter
. . . Professor Ruggiero is at once a brilliant scholar
and a dynamic, entertaining speaker. Rarely in my own long experience
as a university professor and community college administrator have I encountered
one who combines as effectively as does Vincent Ruggiero the originality
and clarity of a superb scholar with the charisma of a gifted speaker.
On several occasions I have heard Professor Ruggiero address large audiences
. . . [At an International Critical Thinking Conference, for example]
he captivated his audiences as he examined with humor, impeccable logic,
and vivid examples ways to distinguish between matters of taste and matters
of judgment.
Dr. Elaine Johnson, Associate Dean,
Mt. Hood Community
College, Gresham, Oregon
Vincent Ryan Ruggiero brings to his subject decades of
research, writing, and experience in testing his concepts. His first presentation
for us as keynoter of a business conference impressed participants with
the quality of his ideas, his careful preparation for the specific topic,
and his dynamic, responsive delivery. He is extremely helpful in working
through and planning an important conference or workshop. We had a rare
opportunity to have the CEO of a major software corporation [Microsoft's
Bill Gates] as part of a panel on critical thinking for business. Vincent
worked with our committee to help us plan and present a workshop for more
than 600 business leaders, faculty, and students. He served both as keynoter
and moderator of the panel and involved the panelists in a valuable and
inspiring discussion on the topic, "The Employee as Thinker."
Elinor W. Magnuson, Executive Director,
Community Colleges
of Spokane (WA) Foundation
