Tuesday, November 27, 2012

CFP: Penn State Shenango Teaching Conference on Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century Classroom

CFP: Penn State Shenango Teaching Conference on Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century Classroom


The Penn State Shenango Teaching Conference will focus on interdisciplinary approaches in undergraduate education and will be held March 15 and 16, 2013, on the campus of Penn State Shenango in Sharon, Pennsylvania. The mission of the conference is to bring college educators together to share experiences, resources, and innovative strategies to meet the diverse challenges of the twenty-first-century classroom.

We welcome proposals for presentations from those who teach in all college-level fields on any topics related to undergraduate education, especially in meeting the diverse challenges of the contemporary college environment. Our first conference was held in the fall of 2010, and covered the following topics, among others:
  • diversity in the classroom
  • nontraditional and adult learners
  • students with disabilities
  • using game theory and gaming in the classroom
  • twenty-first-century freshman composition courses
  • enhancing the freshman experience
  • engaging undergraduate students
  • reaching first-generation college students
Submissions are now being accepted for presentations on creating lifelong learners in the higher education classroom. The diverse classroom comes with diverse student challenges, including age variation, ranges in the understanding and use of technology, and career changes. Some students have few role models for higher education in their families, and nontraditional students especially juggle responsibilities and stressors beyond attaining their education. Additionally, faculty members encounter more students with diagnosed learning disabilities, yet seldom are specifically trained to accommodate them. Further, as the economy becomes more globalized, educators are looking for ways to offer international experiences to their students.

We are accepting abstracts for presentations or workshops on the theme of lifelong learning.

We are especially interested in the following topics:
• diversity in the student body (including adult learners, first-generation students, students with learning disabilities, and underprepared students)
• active learning (involving students in research and classroom activities, and engaging digital natives)
• integrating new technology into teaching (social media and mobile devices)
• global and international perspectives

Abstracts should be up to 300 words in length with no more than two graphs or tables included. Please
include the following information with your electronic submission: name, name of institution, contact
phone number, email address, and mailing address.

The due date for abstracts is December 7, 2012. Please submit to sv-teaching-conf@lists.psu.edu.

For information about the conference, visit our website: www.outreach.psu.edu/programs/teaching-conference

-- 
Matthew P. Ciszek
Assistant Librarian

Head, Lartz Memorial Library
Penn State Shenango
177 Vine Ave.
Sharon, PA 16146

mpc16@psu.edu