The Changing Climate Of Higher Education
Marguerite Weber will explore today’s higher education landscape and the impact of the dual threat of the COVID pandemic and social polarization that challenges us to define a “new normal”. What is the role of college teaching and learning in reasserting the transformative power of learning? How do faculty and the administrators who serve them reconceive assumptions and redesign processes that bring learning to people on both sides of the great divide in pandemic experiences? Those who already had technology literacy, habits of self-direction, and confidence that systems would re-stabilize may have benefited from the flexibility and access afforded them during the shift to safe access pedagogies; now, they may have little appetite for the restrictions of time and place of the pre-COVID normal. Yet legions of “new majority” students have had their world and lives rocked by workplace and income disruptions, basic needs insecurities, as well as fading hope in the safety-net of community resources – how can we remain relevant and equitable for them?
This event will feature a talk by one of the College Teaching and Learning Science program's advisory board members, Marguerite Weber, followed by a panel of current students and alumni moderated by program director Eileen O'Brien. While we’ll discuss practical teaching strategies within this difficult environment, an overarching goal is to reframe our thinking about higher education’s potential as an engine of larger scale social recovery and resilience as the world faces continued existential challenges and about how this healing starts teacher by teacher and learner by learner.
This conversation is hosted by UMBC's College Teaching and Learning Science Post-Master's Certificate program. For more information about the certificate, please contact collegeteaching@umbc.edu.