S1 E11 | Redefining the University Experience – with Ben Nelson

Todd Zipper, EVP and GM of Wiley University Services and Talent Development, welcomes Ben Nelson, Founder and CEO of the Minerva Project and Minerva University. Todd and Ben discuss how Minerva is evolving higher ed and preparing students for a fulfilling, lifelong career. By offering challenging curriculum, global experiences, and top-notch career development, Minerva’s goal is to inform better leaders, smarter innovators, and more informed global citizens. Topics Discussed: •Why Minerva University is a reformer, not a disrupter•How to leverage social and experiential learning to provide the best outcomes for students•How courses and curriculum can build off each other to deeply engage learners •The importance of teaching transferable and practical knowledge•The future of learning and artificial intelligence•Why higher ed needs to focus more on education and engagement, not certificationGuest Bio Ben Nelson is the Founder and CEO of the Minerva Project and Minerva University. Driven by his passion to reinvent higher ed, Ben founded Minerva in 2011 with the goal of preparing exceptional learners.Before Minerva, Ben spent over 10 years at Snapfish, where he helped build the company from a startup to the world’s largest personal publishing service. He served as CEO at Snapfish from 2005 to 2010 and led the company’s sale to Hewlett Packard for $300 million. Prior to Snapfish, he was President and CEO of Community Ventures, a network of locally branded portals for American communities.Ben received a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He became the chair of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, a pedagogical think tank that is the oldest and only non-elected student government body at the University of Pennsylvania.