UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, along with the Schreyer Honors College, will host “Schreyer Conference 2015: Transformative Teaching and Learning” from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at the Penn Stater Conference Center. The conference is free and open to anyone in the Penn State community.
The focus of the 2015 biennial Schreyer Conference is directly aligned with two of President Eric Barron’s six imperatives — excellence and student engagement — and indirectly linked to others (diversity, student career success, accessibility, and technology). It is intended to provide exemplars of the Transforming Education pillar included in Provost Nick Jones’ representation of the University’s next strategic plan. The theme also reflects other important Penn State endeavors, including the Engaged Scholarship Initiative and the new General Education curriculum.
Every college and campus will be represented in the program of concurrent sessions. Each has identified a presenter or group of presenters to symbolize an educational transformation that occurred in the college or campus. In order to be as inclusive as possible, the definition of transformative teaching and learning was left up to the colleges and campuses, because what constitutes a transformative teaching or learning experience will vary by context, person, discipline, program, and/or location.
The transformations discussed at the conference may reflect those experienced by students or faculty, or a transformation within a program, department, college, or campus. Some presenters will focus on a transformative teaching experience, while others will discuss a transformative student learning experience. In a few cases student and faculty co-presenters will discuss both.
The keynote presentations will also focus on transformative teaching and learning, one centered on research conducted by a leader in the learning sciences and another on experiences of diverse members of the Penn State community captured through the Community Narratives project. The culminating keynote features an interview of Jones by Dean Christian Brady of the Schreyer Honors College that will explore the provost's views of transformative teaching and learning.
For those not able to attend, the opening keynote session and conversation with the provost will be streamed live online. For additional information and to register for the conference, go to https://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/schreyerconference.