Cambridge University to Create a Lego Professorship

Image by Julochka/Flickr Com­mons

So it turns out that my two-year old son might be qual­i­fied for a pro­fes­sor­ship at an elite uni­ver­si­ty. No, he’s not some Doo­gie Hows­er-style savant. He just real­ly likes Legos. And Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty – the school of Isaac New­ton, Charles Dar­win and Stephen Hawk­ing – has announced that it’s get­ting ready to cre­ate a Lego pro­fes­sor­ship this fall.

The posi­tion, which is slat­ed to start in Octo­ber 2015, came about fol­low­ing a £4 mil­lion dona­tion from the Lego Foun­da­tion. The Den­mark-based orga­ni­za­tion, which owns 25% of the Lego toy com­pa­ny, states that their mis­sion is to “make chil­dren’s lives bet­ter — and com­mu­ni­ties stronger — by mak­ing sure the fun­da­men­tal val­ue of play is under­stood, embraced and act­ed upon.” The Foun­da­tion already has ties with MIT and Tsinghua Uni­ver­si­ty in Chi­na, among oth­ers.

Who ever lands the pro­fes­sor­ship will also head the Research Cen­tre on Play in Edu­ca­tion, Devel­op­ment and Learn­ing and will explore the con­nec­tion between learn­ing and play.

The qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the job seem remark­ably broad. As the uni­ver­si­ty says: “The can­di­da­ture should be open to all those whose work falls with­in the gen­er­al field of the title of the office.” They don’t, how­ev­er, specif­i­cal­ly men­tion that can­di­dates have to be pot­ty trained. I’m get­ting my son’s resume ready.

You can read Cam­bridge’s back­ground doc­u­men­ta­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Pro­fes­sor Risk” at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Says “One of the Biggest Risks is Being Too Cau­tious”

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

Find Cours­es from Cam­bridge in our Col­lec­tion of Free Cours­es Online

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.