Overview

Join us for our two-day Semester Spark program and the One Book, One University initiative kick-off!

We are so excited to host you for the Spring 2025 Semester Spark, which will take place on January 14-15, 2025, from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., at Rocky Top Student Center on York Hill. Each day will focus on meaningful changes you can make in the spring 2025 semester to care for your students, care for yourself, and level up your syllabus and assignments.

The event will conclude by kicking off the One Book, One University initiative with a keynote address by Catherine J. Denial, author of A Pedagogy of Kindness.

When & Where

Register for Day 1 and/or Day 2 here (registration is required) →

Full Schedule

Day 1: “Care”

Overview

The first day of Semester Spark will center care as a necessary tool for teaching success. Sessions will be focused on building relationship-rich educational dynamics with students and colleagues, mental health and the classroom, self-care and personal wellbeing for faculty, and tools for work-life balance.

After participating in Day 1 of Semester Spark, you should be able to:

• Discuss the relationship between care, community, and learning
• Explain ways to support student mental health
• Identify mechanisms for faculty self-care
• Deploy time management tools to sustain yourself and your pedagogical practice throughout the semester

What you’ll need

• Laptop
• Phone
• Preferred note-taking mechanism

What we’ll provide

• Lunch & beverages

Sessions

10:00 a.m: Welcome

10:30 a.m. - Noon: How to Support Student Mental Health as Faculty – Penny Leisring, Professor of Psychology

• Attendees will learn best teaching practices in the context of the rising rates of mental health problems among college students. Topics will include strategies for structuring courses and syllabi to reduce student stress while maintaining rigor and learning outcomes; ways to incorporate wellness material into courses from various disciplines; and methods for improving one’s approachability as an instructor by getting to know students and centering compassion and support in communications with them.

12:15 - 1:15 p.m: Lunch

1:30 - 2:30 p.m.: Breakout Sessions

• Session 1: Time Management Tech Tools for Faculty
• Details TBA
• Session 2: Introduction to Transparent Design
• Sara Rzeszutek, Director for Faculty Advancement in Teaching Excellence, will lead a session on how to use the TILT (Transparency in Learning and Teaching) Framework to streamline and simplify your assignments. Assignments that are built using this framework create more ease and less annoyance and chaos during the semester. In addition to making your life easier, the TILT framework is a widely recognized inclusive pedagogical practice, mitigating achievement barriers and gaps regardless of the subject matter you teach. Participants will have an opportunity to apply this strategy to an assignment on Day two.

2:45 - 4:00 p.m: Inclusive Excellence Teaching Lab: Reflection and Planning

• IETL fellow Jennifer Dauphinais, Assistant Teaching Professor of Education, will update participants on the status of IETL and discuss ideas for next steps.

Day 2: “Change”

Overview

The second day of Semester Spark will focus on changes you’d like to make to your course materials before the start of spring 2025 classes. Whether you’d like to update your syllabi to reflect new ideas, upgrade your assignment design, or level up your use of artificial intelligence in your teaching practice, day two will give you the opportunity to make some of those changes.

After participating in Day 2 of Semester Spark, you should be able to:

• Apply components of day one’s focus on care to your spring 2025 courses
• Revise assignments to ensure transparency, equity, and improved processes for you and your students
• Create an AI policy for your syllabus that aligns with your needs
• Discuss themes from A Pedagogy of Kindness that support student and faculty wellbeing

What you’ll need

• Laptop
• Phone
• Preferred note-taking mechanism
• A syllabus you’d like to workshop
• An assignment you’d like to workshop

What we’ll provide

• Lunch & beverages
• Guiding documents for sessions

Sessions

10:00 a.m: Welcome

10:15 - 11:45 a.m.: Building your Syllabus in the Age of AI – QILT team members

• This session will focus on changes you’d like to make to a syllabus. In addition to considering how the components of care we discussed on day one can inform your syllabus design, this session will give you time to consider how AI fits into your courses and how to build a policy that suits your needs.

Noon - 12:45 p.m.: Lunch

12:45 - 2:15 p.m.: Breakout Sessions

• Session 1: Using AI to Build Rubrics – Caitlin Hanlon, Associate Professor of Biology and QUWACT Fellow
• This hands-on workshop invites educators to explore how AI tools can assist in drafting and refining rubrics for evaluating student projects. Participants will examine different types of rubrics, discuss the strengths and limitations of those they’ve used before, and experiment with AI to generate initial rubric drafts tailored to specific assignment prompts. We’ll also cover best practices for implementing rubrics effectively and identify ways to integrate AI tools into future rubric design workflows. Attendees are encouraged to bring assignment prompts or examples of rubrics for group discussion and feedback.
• Session 2: Assignment Charette
• Sara Rzeszutek, Director for Faculty Advancement in Teaching Excellence, will facilitate an assignment charette. For this, you’ll work in small groups with colleagues from across QU. You’ll share an assignment you’d like to get feedback on, and each group will help each participant identify ways to make the assignment stronger.

Keynote Address

2:30 - 4:00 p.m.: One Book, One University Kickoff: Keynote Address by A Pedagogy of Kindness author Catherine J. Denial

About the Book

Student well-being is at the center of a Pedagogy of Kindness. By making small but meaningful changes to the structures of our courses, to our syllabi, and to our assignments, we can reduce the stress that so many of our students carry, and create opportunities for collaborative change that benefit student and instructor both.

About the Author

Catherine Denial is the Mary Elizabeth Hand Bright and Edwin Winslow Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College. Her historical work focuses on 19th century U.S. history, gender, and relationships among native and non-native peoples. In A Pedagogy of Kindness, she argues that "academia needs to get relentlessly kind, a practice that has nothing to do with simply “being nice.”  Kindness requires a commitment to justice be front and center in our teaching in order for us to co-create incredible learning opportunities with our students."

Virtual Attendance

The address will be delivered virtually. Spark attendees will view it live at Rocky Top. A Zoom option for the keynote will be available for those unable to attend Semester Spark in person. To receive the Zoom information, please use the registration link above and indicate your attendance accordingly.

Resources

Resources for you will be added to this page following the sessions!