The Center for Teaching Excellence will hold its annual Excellence in Teaching Day on May 7, featuring a discussion between City University of New York Professor Cathy Davidson and Georgetown University Vice Provost for Education Randy Bass on topics ranging from the future of higher education to the intersection of technology and the liberal arts.

Additional speakers include Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley, who will lead a panel on the future of the liberal arts, as well as more than 25 University faculty and staff at breakout sessions focused on current topics in teaching in higher education.

"Excellence in Teaching Day seeks to bring faculty together for substantive conversations about important issues in teaching and learning," said Stacy Grooters, director of faculty programs at CTE, which supports instructors as they create engaging and inclusive learning environments for students.

This year's theme of "Imagining the Future of Learning" will be underscored by the conversation between Davidson and Bass, said Grooters, which takes place at 1:30 p.m. in Robsham Theater.

Davidson's founding director of the Futures Initiative and a distinguished professor in the Ph.D. Program in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. She co-directs the CUNY Humanities Alliance, a program in partnership with LaGuardia Community College, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and dedicated to training graduate students to teach in community colleges. Currently, her scholarship focuses on the future of higher education.

Bass is a professor of English at Georgetown, where he leads the Designing the Future(s) initiative and the Red House incubator for curricular transformation. The founding executive director of Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, Bass has been working at the crossroads of new media technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning for nearly 30 years.

"Bass and Davidson challenge us to rethink our assumptions about teaching and learning in the face of a changing higher education landscape," said Grooters.

Breakout sessions held in Fulton Hall will feature faculty presenters discussing topics such as "#MeToo In the Classroom," "Teaching Empathy," "Ways to Support Low Income and First Generation College Students," "Teaching with Simulations," "Innovative Approaches to Grading," and "Making Learning Public: Fostering Student Engagement with Authentic Audiences."

In addition, the Teaching Innovation Poster Fair in the Bonn Studio Theater will showcase creative and cutting-edge approaches to teaching from faculty and graduate students from across campus, said Grooters.

Registration is required. To register or learn more, visit the event website.

—Ed Hayward | University Communications