The torch was passed June 14 at the 131st annual meeting of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. Longtime chamber member and Jackson Walker LLP attorney Susan Halsey officially took the reins as chairman from Whit Smith. “I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat,” said Smith. “The chamber staff makes it easy – or at least it looks easy because they do such fine work for you, the members.” The chamber also presented the Spirit of Enterprise award to the Kelly Hart and Hallman law firm. The featured speaker this year was Milton Chen, a senior fellow and executive director emeritus at the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Chen, author of Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools, said he had a simple measure to tell if a school is working. “Do students run in at the same rate they run out? That’s a key,” he said. Chen also singled out Fort Worth Independent School District’s Alice Carlson Applied Learning Center as a good example of a school moving toward project-based learning as opposed to traditional textbook-based learning.
For a video of the event: