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Organized by the Office of Academic Affairs, its development is a part of the implementation of the strategic “Fredonia Plan,” developed in 2005.
One of the plan’s initiatives focuses on the “culture of learning” and, among other components, includes a campus-wide event focused on this subject.
Following some welcoming remarks by President Dennis Hefner, the conference’s morning session featured two nationally known speakers:
- Jean Twenge, Associate Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, and author of Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before. She presented information and data from her study of 1.3 million young people to show the differences among generations in areas such as self-esteem, individualism, and anxiety.
- Candace Thille, Director of the Open Learning Initiative (OLI) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. OLI is a project funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to contribute to the growing understanding of effective online learning environments. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Thille spent 18 years in the private sector at a management consulting and training firm specializing in collaborative change consulting and workplace learning solutions.
Workshop participants had opportunities to hear both speakers and then engage in small-group discussions across departments and divisions. In the afternoon, faculty held department-based conversations about teaching and learning in their own disciplines based on the ideas they heard that morning.
The conference concluded with a wrap-up session, in which departments reported on their break-out sessions, and Vice President of Academic Affairs Virginia Horvath connected the day’s discussions with several current on-campus initiatives.
