Speakers for the 2014 Symposium
Keynote: Institutional Culture Change: Academic Innovation and Inclusive Excellence
Freeman Hrabowski, President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), leads a campus widely recognized for its culture of embracing academic innovation and inclusive excellence. This culture has produced a number of distinctive initiatives to support and enhance teaching and learning – from infusing entrepreneurship and civic engagement into the curriculum to establishing an academic innovation fund to support faculty as they redesign courses and develop new approaches to help students succeed. Dr. Hrabowski will discuss some of these innovative initiatives, focusing special attention on building a diverse culture of innovation and excellence in STEM fields, and the critically important process of institutional culture change.
Read more about Dr. Hrabowski - http://president.umbc.edu/.
Plenary Speakers:
Why it matters - enhancing student learning and interest by connecting course topics to issues of critical local, national, and global importance via intense real world experiences.
Michael Yard, Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching at IUPUI
We may sometimes wonder if what we do truly makes an impact on our students, and whether the information and opportunities we provide matter to society in the long run. This talk will showcase how students in the Health Professions Programs (HPP) First-Year Seminar class were provided opportunities to extend their learning across the curriculum to broader social and community issues through Science Education for New Civic Engagement (SENCER) Learning Communities at IUPUI. The talk will also explain how undergraduates connect with cutting-edge medical scholarship in the IUPUI Department of Biology gateway Human Anatomy class that is required for over 1200 students each year who are considering careers in Nursing, Dentistry, Pharmacology, Physician’s Assistant, and other Allied Health fields.
Multicultural Teaching Increases Student Learning and Engagement: Why We Can (and Should) Try Multicultural Teaching
Leslie Ashburn-Nardo, Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Multicultural Teaching at IUPUI
Many of us believe that by nature or by training we are ill prepared to engage in multicultural teaching. For example, instructors who are not members of underrepresented groups may feel they lack credibility with diverse students. In addition, instructors of courses in domains not traditionally associated with diversity may not readily see the relevance of multicultural teaching. This talk will challenge these and other misconceptions about multicultural teaching, present data demonstrating the importance of multicultural teaching for student success, and offer some practical tips for incorporating multicultural teaching practices into a variety of college-level classes.