Keynote Speaker: Jeff Bean

Jeff Bean is a retired public-school teacher who taught Social Studies and Literature in Flint, Michigan for over 25 years.  While there he also fostered the initiation of an International Baccalaureate program and mentored a Model United Nations Club that traveled around the world.  He did his undergraduate work at Marygrove College in Detroit in both Education and Public Policy and did advanced work at Eastern Michigan University and Harvard School of Education.

He came to Ferris State University after retiring from Public School teaching and realizing you can only clean a kitchen so many times in a day.  At Ferris State, he advises education students in Elementary and Early Childhood Education (the true heroes of education) and is the placement coordinator for the eastern half of the state of Michigan.  He is also blessed to co-teach with Hollie Stephenson who does the placement for the western half of the state from Ferris State’s main campus in Big Rapids.

Jeff has always been about utilizing education as a revolutionary tool.  People who know how to think as opposed to what to think have always posed a threat to the status quo and kept democracy vital.  He shares that the great joy of working at the university level is to see student teachers discover the power of relationships in their rooms and how they can, indeed, make the positive impacts of which they have always dreamed.

He has been blessed to work with such amazing agents of change as Buckminster Fuller, Dr. Betty Shabazz, Tom Hayden, and Dr. Kathleen Butler.  He currently serves at Ferris State University under Dr. Liza Ing, a University of Northern Colorado alum and has done a yearlong fellowship with the Center for Whole Communities.