Ask The Experts: Bill O'Neil

Q: What skills are critical for students heading off to college and into an ever-evolving workplace?

A: “We want to situate students with projects and activities where they have to figure things out, look at things within a discipline and then across disciplines to solve problems,” says Bill O’Neil, assistant headmaster and academic dean of K-12 at University School. “Students are asked to do interdisciplinary tasks of problem-solving, so that they learn the nimbleness they will need throughout their adult life to be productive. They’re going to have to learn and re-learn things because technology is changing so rapidly today. They also have to have a global perspective. With technology and global competitiveness, they need to have a sense of one community, an international community, to solve problems that this next generation will have.”