Getting comfortable with uncomfortable topics in the teaching and learning experience. Faculty Senate, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the Center for Teaching will sponsor an Inclusion Teach-In on Friday, November 13, 9:00 am – 1:30 pm, in room 2520D of the University Capitol Centre.
This event is open to anyone on campus who teaches. No registration is required.
The program will run until 12:30 pm. We encourage you to bring a bag lunch for an informal discussion after the panel presentations.
The Teach-In will feature two panels of speakers. The first panel (9:00-10:15 am) will include students and alumni. They will talk about positive or negative learning experiences they have had related to issues such as race, gender, sexuality, politics, religion, or other sensitive topics and share their thoughts on how their backgrounds and previous life experiences have affected their learning experiences and shaped their reactions to discussions both inside and outside the classroom with regard to these topics. The panelists will also discuss whether students feel that classroom experiences tend to address or avoid important social or political issues as they might be relevant to the subject matter and they will describe teaching techniques they feel their professors have employed to deal with sensitive topics either inside or outside the classroom.
Student/alumni panelists include Julius Carter, Clarisse Chia, Shima Ebed, Ben Gillig, and Roberto Paniagua.
The second panel (10:30 am - 12:30 pm) will include UI faculty members who have dealt with sensitive topics in the classroom. They will discuss whether and how to introduce uncomfortable topics related to race, gender, sexuality, politics, religion, etc., along with how to create a classroom conducive to healthy debate and how to respond to controversial statements made by students. In addition, the panelists with share advice on how to interact more successfully with diverse populations of students both inside and outside the classroom and how to prepare students to address issues related to sensitive topics that they will confront in life after they leave the university.
Faculty panelists include
Walid Afifi, Professor and Department Chair, Communication Studies, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Kenneth G. Brown, Professor and Associate Dean, Tippie College of Business
Richard Fumerton, F. Wendell Miller Professor, Philosophy, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Lena Hill, Associate Professor, English and African American Studies, Director of English Undergraduate Studies, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Landon Storrs, Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, History, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Wenfang Tang, Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies, C. Maxwell and Elizabeth M. Stanley Family and Hua Hsia Chair of Chinese Culture and Institutions, Political Science, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Sherry Watt, Associate Professor, Educational Policy and Leadership Studies, College of Education and Diversity Office Faculty Fellow