FALL CONFERENCE SCHEDULE AND SESSION DESCRIPTIONS
“These aren’t just good strategies (and they are!) but, when integrated systematically, they are transformative experiences for both students and instructors.” –Jim Kain, Neumann University, PA
The 2022 1-Day Fall Energizer conference will be held on October 28th
virtually through Zoom!
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FALL ENERGIZER CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:
| FRIDAY, October 28 | |
|---|---|
| 7:00am-8:00am Pacific | Breakfast on Your Own (recipe suggestions will be shared) |
| 8:00am-9:00am Pacific | Session #1: Opening Keynote (60 Minutes) |
| 9:00am-9:15am Pacific | Energizer/Restoration Break |
| 9:15am-10:30am Pacific | Session #2: Plenary Session with Keynoter (75 Minutes) |
| 10:30am-11:15am Pacific | Meal Break on Your Own (recipe suggestions will be shared) |
| 11:15am-12:30pm Pacific | Session #3: Breakouts (75 Minutes) |
| 12:30pm-12:45pm Pacific | Reflection Break |
| 12:45pm-2:00pm Pacific | Session #4: Breakouts (75 Minutes) |
“Thank you for putting this together and having good presenters with valuable content.” –Sylwia Kulczak, Rio Hondo College, CA
“Thank you – this was an amazing conference!” –Nicole Adsitt, Cayuga Community College, NY
2022 Opening Keynote Session with Sarah Rose Cavanagh, PhD.
Author of The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with Science of Emotion and
Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge
Opening Keynote: Reviving Our Sparks: Energizing Higher Education with Learning Environments of Compassionate Challenge
Teaching is a vocation. When supported with resources and security, it is a constantly renewing source of excitement and richness. The last several years of disruption, uncertainty, and overburdened workloads have exhausted teachers and students alike. Indeed, students are experiencing an epidemic of mental health problems, especially of anxiety. As instructors, we can support and encourage student mental health through pedagogies of care. A pedagogy of care involves high-touch practices like frequent communication, flexibility, inclusive teaching practices, learning new technologies and techniques, and being enthusiastic and passionate. All these practices involve both a heavy investment of time and a high degree of emotional labor. How can we support our students without burning ourselves out? How can we revive our sparks? In this interactive keynote, Sarah Rose Cavanagh will present some research and food for thought based on her upcoming book on how higher education should respond to both faculty depletion and the student mental health crisis.
Plenary Session: Lessons For Building Community From Social Neuroscience
A sense of community in the classroom contributes to effective learning, likely through benefits to student motivation. While traditional pedagogical literature speaks to methods of building community within the classroom, we can also look outside our intellectual silos to other academic disciplines researching how human beings form and maintain effective collaborative groups. In this interactive session, we’ll consider powerful research investigating team dynamics in simulated space missions, the social neuroscience of how the brain embeds our social others in our very sense of self, and even how honeybees make collective decisions together. We will work together to understand and apply these lessons to the work of the higher education classroom.
Biography
Sarah Rose Cavanagh is the Senior Associate Director for Teaching and Learning in the Center for Faculty Excellence at Simmons University, where she also teaches in the Psychology Department as an Associate Professor of Practice. Before joining Simmons, she was an Associate Professor of psychology and neuroscience (tenured) at Assumption University, where she also served in the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence as Associate Director for Grants and Research. Sarah’s research considers the interplay of emotions, motivation, learning, and quality of life. Her most recent research project, funded by the National Science Foundation, convenes a network of scholars to develop teaching practices aimed at greater effectiveness and equity in undergraduate biology education. She is author of four books, including The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion (2016) and upcoming Mind Over Monsters: Supporting Youth Mental Health with Compassionate Challenge (2023). She frequently gives keynote addresses and workshops at a variety of colleges and regional conferences, blogs for Psychology Today, and writes essays for venues like Literary Hub and The Chronicle of Higher Education. She’s also on Twitter too much, at @SaRoseCav.
2022 Fall Program COMING SOON!
Session #1 - Opening Keynote (60 minutes) 8:00AM-9:00AM Pacific Time
Session 1: Opening Keynote with Sarah Rose Cavanagh, Senior Associate Director for Teaching and Learning in the Center for Faculty Excellence; Associate Professor of Practice, Psychology, Simmons University, MA
Reviving Our Sparks: Energizing Higher Education with Learning Environments of Compassionate Challenge
Summary: Teaching is a vocation. When supported with resources and security, it is a constantly renewing source of excitement and richness. The last several years of disruption, uncertainty, and overburdened workloads have exhausted teachers and students alike. Indeed, students are experiencing an epidemic of mental health problems, especially of anxiety. As instructors, we can support and encourage student mental health through pedagogies of care. A pedagogy of care involves high-touch practices like frequent communication, flexibility, inclusive teaching practices, learning new technologies and techniques, and being enthusiastic and passionate. All these practices involve both a heavy investment of time and a high degree of emotional labor. How can we support our students without burning ourselves out? How can we revive our sparks? In this interactive keynote, Sarah Rose Cavanagh will present some research and food for thought based on her upcoming book on how higher education should respond to both faculty depletion and the student mental health crisis.
Session #2 - Plenary Session with Keynoter (75 minutes) 9:15AM-10:30AM Pacific Time
Session 2: Plenary Session with Sarah Rose Cavanagh, Senior Associate Director for Teaching and Learning in the Center for Faculty Excellence; Associate Professor of Practice, Psychology, Simmons University, MA
Lessons For Building Community From Social Neuroscience
Summary: A sense of community in the classroom contributes to effective learning, likely through benefits to student motivation. While traditional pedagogical literature speaks to methods of building community within the classroom, we can also look outside our intellectual silos to other academic disciplines researching how human beings form and maintain effective collaborative groups. In this interactive session, we’ll consider powerful research investigating team dynamics in simulated space missions, the social neuroscience of how the brain embeds our social others in our very sense of self, and even how honeybees make collective decisions together. We will work together to understand and apply these lessons to the work of the higher education classroom.
Session 3A: Best Practices in Hy-Flex Learning
Presenter: Michelle Francis, Faculty, Child Studies/TEACH Center/Professional Development Chair, West Valley College, CA
Summary: “Hy-Flex, Hy-flex, it’s off to work we go.” Are we ready for this brave new world? Please join this highly interactive session to learn 1) why hy-flex teaching is so challenging, 2) how it serves students, and 3) why we can infuse the On Course principles as a means of engaging in best practice for hy-flex instruction. Michelle Francis has taught hy-flex and worked with myriad faculty members to improve their hy-flex instruction so that it better serves students.
Session 3B: “Amnesia, Fantasia, Inertia:” Prior Knowledge in Learning
Presenter: Deb Poese, Director, Teacher Education Partnership/Faculty, Mathematics, Montgomery College, MD
Summary: In 1999, psychologist Lee Shulman wrote an article for Change magazine titled “Taking Learning Seriously.” In this article, he outlined what he called the “pathologies of learning: we forget, we don’t understand that we misunderstand, and we are unable to use what we learned.” More than twenty years later, neuroscience and educational psychology researchers continue to work to improve learning by identifying best practices in understanding students’ prior knowledge and the barriers that misconceptions can create. Join us to investigate the importance of this topic in the context of equitable practices and learn or relearn strategies to support your students’ learning.
Session 3C: Happiness Science for Learners
Presenter: Jonathan Brennan, Faculty, English Department, Mission College, CA
Summary: Happy students perform better. They collaborate with others more readily, demonstrate increased engagement, and earn higher grades. They even score higher on math tests! But are our students happy? If not, how can we help them become happier? In this session we will explore the growing body of happiness research, and you’ll experience specific strategies designed to raise your students’ happiness levels. We will examine the impact of social comparisons, and how social media makes people less happy. We’ll look at hedonic adaptation, the cycle through which we seek more and more, attempting to raise our happiness, then settle right back into our prior “set point.” Happiness science has tested and defined the conditions which raise our experience of subjective well being, and there are specific strategies we can share with our students to avoid some of the distorted thinking which keeps happiness out of our grasp. If you want to understand more about the factors governing happiness, please join us (who knows, you might even walk away a bit happier…).
Session #4 - Breakouts (75 minutes) 12:45PM-2:00PM Pacific Time
Session 4A: Padlet and Kahoot for Newbies (but know-it-alls are welcome, too)
Presenter: Britta Burton, Faculty, ESL/Professional Development, Mission College, CA
Summary: This hands-on introduction to Padlet and Kahoot! will familiarize participants with some of the stimulating, interactive, and FUN features of both Padlet and Kahoot! Attendees will learn how to create a basic Padlet activity and Kahoot! game that can be used in any discipline or learning environment, such as in f2f, synchronous or asynchronous classes or meetings. Take away some stimulating ideas – your imagination is the limit!
Session 4B: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Pedagogy: Empowering our students to use awareness
practices to enhance their academic success and well-being
Presenters: Deidre Hughes, MIND Faculty, Mindful Growth Initiative Co-Coordinator, Fullerton
College, CA and Valerie Tuttle, MIND Faculty, Mindful Growth Initiative Planning Group
Member, Fullerton College, CA
Summary: Want to improve student success and well-being on your campus but not sure where to begin?
Research shows that mindfulness and compassion practices lower stress and increase focus.
Learn how Fullerton College developed a Mindfulness and Compassion Academic Program with
transfer-level curriculum for students through their unique, collaborative Mindful Growth
Initiative. In this interactive session, you will be inspired as we describe the steps taken to
create this innovative program along with sharing informal research results and qualitative data
demonstrating improved student success.
Session 4C: The Equity Minded Educator’s Journey – Where are you?
Presenter: Tonya Greene, Department Head, First Year Academy, Wake Technical Community College, NC
Summary: Our beliefs as educators, as well are our values and lived experiences, serve as the foundation for our words, actions, and decisions as teachers. “Equity-mindedness does not come naturally. It requires a knowledge base, and it takes a lot of practice.” (McNair et al, 2020). Establishing an equity-minded classroom community takes time and intentional reflection. It’s not as simple as learning new instructional strategies. In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer (2007) states “What makes a teacher successful with students who live in poverty (and in reality, all students) requires attending to the questions of why we teach and who is the “self that teaches.” During this session, we will explore some common myths about equity in the classroom as well as examine some common hesitancies instructors have with adopting equitable and inclusive classroom teaching practices. Participants will leave with learner-centered strategies and resources to support their journey on becoming an equity practitioner.
