VSCS Academic Retreat 2021
Reflection & Resilience
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Session recordings linked below
8:45-9:50 Welcome and Student Panel
“What Helped You Get Through This Year?” session recording
Moderated by Elaine Harvey, NVU
10:00-10:50 Morning Sessions Focus
What we’re learning and doing to become more inclusive, equitable, and supportive of the individuals in our community.
- Seeking Social Justice in our Syllabi session recording
Kristi Castleberry & Rob Schulze, NVU
Robert Schulze and Kristi Castleberry, two members of the NVU faculty, examined a year’s worth of NVU syllabi to see how frequently issues relating to diversity and inclusion appeared. This presentation will provide an overview of their findings and some discussion of how we can all make diversity, inclusion, and equity more explicit in our courses.
- BIPOC Student Experiences: Listening and Acting
Elaine Harvey, NVU
Join Elaine Harvey, NVU’s Director of Student Engagement and Persistence to hear about NVU’s approach to supporting BIPOC students as well as participate in an interactive discussion to facilitate group sharing opportunities.
- Creating Safe Learning Spaces for Students and Faculty: Integrating DEI concepts into STEM Courses session recording
Linda Wise and Kathleen Mason, VTC
Presentation slides can be found here
The intent to incorporate DEI objectives into STEM class content starts long before it reaches the student. Join VTC Math Professor, Linda Segovia Wise and VTC Coordinator of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Kathleen Mason as they share an example of how this can look in a STEM course. This talk will focus on strategies that lead to sustainable change to the classroom culture. We hope this process will help cultivate a safe learning community where students and faculty feel brave enough to seek multiple and possibly divergent perspectives and engage in challenging conversations that build inclusivity and a positive classroom culture.
- Decolonizing the Syllabus
Nina Kunimoto and Mikaela Simms, CCV
Decolonizing the Syllabus will explore the meaning of decolonization in the context of building a syllabus. The facilitators will lead you through discussions on how to figure out what you need to know (and do) to work towards decolonization both inside and outside the classroom. You will walk away considering whose voices and knowledge are being invited into the classroom as valid knowledge and not just a compliment or alternative or sidebar.
- The Case for Prior Learning Assessment: Promoting Equity for All Learning
Melissa DeBlois, CCV
This session will provide a broad overview of Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) and then break down the practical details to best support your students. First, learn about the national data supporting PLA and debunk some of the myths about acknowledging college-level learning acquired outside of the classroom. Then, learn about the distinctions between our available offerings and some strategies to promote them to your students.
11:00-12:15 Keynote
Designing for Care: Inclusive Strategies for Online and Face-to-Face Student Engagement
Keynote Speaker: Jesse Stommel, Ph.D., Digital Learning Fellow, University of Mary Washington and affiliate of the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice
keynote recording
Jesse’s presentation slides can be found here
There has been much talk over the last year about maintaining ‘continuity’ of instruction and assessment, but it’s even more important for us to talk about how we maintain the communities at the heart of our educational institutions. This is the design challenge before us. There is no one-size-fits-all set of best practices for building a learning community, whether on-ground or online. Right now, we should begin our efforts toward building community by designing for the students who need that community most, the ones most likely to have been feeling isolated even before the pandemic: disabled students, chronically ill students, students of color, queer students, and students facing housing and food-insecurity.
About this year’s keynote speaker: Jesse Stommel is co-founder of Digital Pedagogy Lab and Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy, and earned his Ph.D. from University of Colorado Boulder. Stommel is co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: The Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy and co-editor of Disrupting the Digital Humanities. He is best known for his work as a champion of teachers and students in higher education, and he is an affiliate of the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice founded by Sara Goldrick-Rab, Ph.D. to support #RealCollege students.
1:00-1:45 System Transformation Update
with Chancellor Sophie Zdatny session recording
2:00-3:00 Afternoon Sessions
Conversations about inclusive and thoughtful cross-campus dialogue, advising best practices, the future of VSCS libraries, classroom instruction modalities, and more.
- It Takes a Village: Advising is more than Registration session recording
Kate Gold and Sara Kinerson, NVU
Kelley Beckwith and Gillian Galle, Castleton
Mary Kathryn Juskiewicz and Kathleen Mason, Vermont Tech
The Colleges of the VSCS currently have several different advising models in operation across our campuses. As we move forward together and begin to make decisions about how to achieve equitable outcomes for all our students, having a shared vocabulary and understanding of current advising research will be essential. This presentation will introduce the most common nationally recognized advising models. Participants will discuss the benefits and challenges of various models and contribute to a brainstorming session on what advising outcomes they believe are most important for our students.
- Hyflex, Synchronous, Telepresence, Oh My! session recording
Sarah Corrow, CCV; Sarah Chambers and Marybeth Lennox-Levins, CU; and Sean Dailey and John Kidder, VTC
COVID forced us to change how we approach teaching by causing us to embrace different instructional modalities and technology tools. In this session, we discuss some of the different instructional approaches used by faculty, including new classroom technology that supported learning. Looking to the future, we anticipate that more classes will want to integrate these tools into their instruction. Come engage in our conversation! Learning Modalities Infographic
- Managing Complicated or Contentious Collaborations
Jae Basiliere, NVU and Chris Boettcher, CU
Are you worried about the upcoming unification process, but you want to work intentionally on making it productive and, if possible, a positive experience? This session will give you some ideas for effective collaboration that you can take back to your colleagues in your unit, department, or working groups across institutions. Participants will share ideas and experiences as they work to co-create a model for collaborative dialogues. Because of the nature of the presentation, this session will not be recorded.
- Envisioning the future of VSCS libraries session recording
Michael Braun-Hamilton, CCV; Bonnie Lord and Susan Currier, VTC; Jay Bona, Elizabeth Bergman, Jason Ryan, and Debra Bailin, NVU
Presentation slides can be found here
Recording is here
The VSCS libraries will be transforming our current four academic libraries to a single integrated virtual library system supporting the Community College of Vermont and the new unified institution. VSCS library staff would like to hear from you about what you want to see in a future library as well as present an introduction to the learning commons model that NVU-Lyndon began 8 years ago as a joint effort with IT, library, and academic support.
- Case Studies in Building a Data Culture to Better Serve and Respond to Students
Elaine Harvey, Director of Student Engagement & Persistence, NVU
Adam Johnson, TIII Research and Evaluation Specialist, NVU
Brady Rainville, Academic & Study Away Advisor, NVU
Kathleen Brinegar, Associate Professor & Title III Program Director, NVU
Recording is here
Join members of the Northern Vermont University Title III team for a presentation and ensuing discussion about building a data-focused culture on your campus centered on student success. Presenters will share case study examples of how applying a holistic approach to incorporating quantitative and qualitative data into student support can result in direct, positive student impact.