Faculty Success
is Student Success

College of Liberal Arts Student Success
Professional Development Conference

Faculty Success is Student Success:
College of Liberal Arts Student Success Professional Development Conference

CSU and the College of Liberal Arts recognize the profound impact that Continuing, Contract, and Adjunct Faculty (CCAF) have across the University, particularly through their involvement in the All-University Core Curriculum (AUCC).

Funding from the College of Liberal Arts has provided the opportunity for CLA to host a fourth annual professional development conference titled Faculty Success is Student Success: College of Liberal Arts Professional Development Conference. This conference has consistently shown positive results. For example, our SU23 cohort reported increased confidence in AUCC curriculum, increased confidence in FFW initiative, increased likelihood of making changes to pedagogical practice, and nearly 70% of participants attended sessions on inclusive pedagogy and reported that they were likely to make changes to their teaching practice as a result. These 52 faculty taught 191 sections with 4251 unique students in online, graduate, undergraduate, and RI courses in the Fall. Among these, 28% (1,206 students) were a part of the first time cohort.

This year's conference will focus on resiliency, providing information that will help students and faculty navigate, and possibly even thrive, in a changing educational landscape. We will bring together leaders in the College of Liberal Arts, the Office of Inclusive Excellence, The Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT), and other experts on pedagogy to offer participants the opportunity to build their professional expertise around student success and position inclusivity as central to their teaching practice.

Conference Info

August 12, 2025
9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
CSU Campus

Conference Schedule

Workshop Descriptions

Dates and Compensation

This conference will be held on the CSU campus August 12, 2025.

CCAF attendees will be compensated with a $200 stipend.

Registration for the Summer 2025 conference is now closed. Contact Elinor.Light@colostate.edu if you're interested in attending to be added to the waitlist.

Conference Schedule

Conference Resources

Tuesday, August 12, 2025

	Room	Topics
8:30 – 8:55 am	LSC, University Ballroom	Check in, light breakfast
9:00 – 9:40 am	LSC, University Ballroom	Introductions and opening remarks from Dean Thorson and Tom & Ellie
9:40 – 10:00 am	LSC, University Ballroom	Dr. Sue Doe, TILT
10:00 – 10:15 am		Break
10:15 – 11:00 am	LSC, University Ballroom	Dr. Annie Krieg, Keynote

Keynote: Reject the Silo: Community, Resiliency, and Joy in Professional Development

Overview: Professional development can feel daunting with the demands of teaching in 2025. It's hard to know where to invest our limited time. Attending a workshop or a mentoring group is often the first thing to get dropped from the schedule. This keynote address recenters community-building at the heart of professional development work. Furthermore, professional development gives us the space to step out of our isolated silos, connecting with each other and why we all love teaching. When we show up for ourselves and for each other to spend time learning and discussing the exhilarating (and messy) business of teaching, we become more resilient - and more joyful - educators and colleagues. Professional development is not about doing more and this talk will provide practical strategies to make the practice of professional development a site of agency and community.

Bio: Annie Krieg is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Art History in the Department of Art and Art History. Her current teaching ranges from large AUCC courses to upper division classes on gender and feminisms in art history and periods of European art history. She is the recipient of the 2025 CLA Excellence in Teaching Award and a TILT Teaching Effectiveness Initiative Fellow.

During the remainder of the conference, we invite you to choose one of three breakout sessions during each hour.

	Option 1 LSC 372-374	Option 2 LSC 376	Option 3 LSC 378
11:00 – 11:50 am	Keri Canada & Joanna Doxey: Invisible Labor: The Potential Symbiosis Between Advising and Teaching	TILT Accessibility Training with Andrew Swanson (Location: University Ballroom and Virtual)	Dr. Niroj Bhattarai: Engaging Students with Personalized AI Tools
11:50 am - 12:50 pm	Lunch: University Lounge	Lunch: University Lounge	Lunch: University Lounge
1:00 - 1:50 pm	slp, “The Humane Classroom: creating welcoming learning communities through relational self- reflection”	Dr. Mitchell Macrae: “Developing Students’ Critical Thinking Skills With Scaffolding and Deliberate Practice”	Megan Bellamy-Lanz, DMA “Connecting with Students in Large AUCC Courses”
2:00 - 2:50 pm	Dr. Leah Holz & Elizabeth Sink: “The Living Library Project: Innovative Storytelling and Radical Listening”	Dr. Devon Fulford: “Experiential Learning: It's Neat, Sure, But Who’s Got the Time?”	Nancy Wright: Easing Up: “Connecting Student Motivation and Instructor Stress.”
3:00 - 3:50 pm	David Pyle: “What a Tale! Storytelling Tools to Drive Lessons Home”	Dr. Aaunterria T. Bollinger-Deters: “Claiming An Adaptable Education: Fostering Engaged Learning Beyond The Classroom”	Dr. Aly Welker: The Live Document: Co-Writing for Community and Meaning

Workshop Descriptions

Each of our workshops is aligned with TILT’s CSU Teaching Effectiveness Framework (TEF) and can be applied towards professional development in the Teaching Effectiveness Initiative (TEI). The TEI is a voluntary professional development program that provides recognition to faculty invested in growing their teaching practice. Participants in the TEI will receive a Domain Certificate of Achievement after receiving 10 development experience units (DEU) in one domain. Each of the Faculty Success is Student Success Conference sessions is 1 DEU. For faculty to earn the DEU’s towards TEI domain certificates, they must submit a post-implementation reflection form discussing the implementation of the teaching strategies they learn during the conference.

Option 1 Breakout Sessions

Invisible Labor: The Potential Symbiosis Between Advising and Teaching

TILT TEF Alignment: Inclusive Pedagogy

Presenter(s): Keri Canada, Academic Success Coordinator II Instructor, and Joanna Doxey, Academic Success Coordinator and Instructor

Description: At CSU, the worlds of administration (in our cases academic advising) and teaching are kept largely separate with little interaction between the two. As administrative professionals/academic advisors who teach for a significant portion of our workload (between 5-9 credits on average per semester), we are uniquely situated for student support, to expand student skills holistically with a deep understanding of curriculum, advising theory, student experience, and the campus ecosystem of resources and barriers. In this roundtable discussion, Keri Canada and Joanna Doxey will introduce our expertise in advising and in teaching (see bios), and how despite those robust portfolios, we have difficulty finding environments where both areas of expertise are allowed to interact and where we can thrive professionally. The symbiosis between advising and teaching also infiltrates our day to day advising, recruitment, and outreach practices in unique and creative ways. This discussion will focus on the possibilities in having advising and teaching interact as we showcase how our knowledge in both realms interact to benefit student success. We expect a robust conversation surrounding (but not limited to) how advising practices impact how we position ourselves in the classroom (online and in person), pedagogy, syllabi, outreach, innovative assessment, building resilient classrooms, etc. We hope to invite audience participation to debunk misperceptions about the world of advising, our roles, and how we can all come together to break boundaries between the administrative and teaching worlds to ultimately benefit students.

Hybrid: No

The Humane Classroom: creating welcoming learning communities through relational self-reflection

TILT TEF Alignment: Classroom Climate

Presenter(s): slp (sarah louise) pieplow, Senior Instructor in Composition, Creative Writing and Literature

Description: It is rare that we—students or facilitators—get to show up in class as our whole flawed, seeking selves in a community that can accept us as such. Depending on our background, we may not think of the classroom or the educational institution as a place of violence. Yet the hierarchical education system that produces us often moves beyond the better angels of what we might consider the rigors of discipline, dedication, learning to manage responsibilities and time, and to deliver on deadlines. The pressures of the system puts students into extreme debt and stress and expectation to perform; ties scholarships, debt, and self-image to that performance; and can put instructors into punitively authoritative roles. To exist in these systems successfully requires us to mask and code-switch and adhere to certain social expectations. This can require us to cut parts of ourselves off and can produce a kind of systemic of inter- and intrapersonal violence in the pursuit of perfectionism. But the room for confusion and failure is a necessary one for learning—for buy-in to classes, for student retention, and for real transformation. This requires being able to create space for students and instructors to be in relationship beyond a transactional one, to form real, if ephemeral, community. How can we show up in these institutional climates in ways that are both authentic and appropriate to the moment? In ways that allow for each student to respond to the difficulties of their moment, and still encourage learning and high expectations? In this workshop we will explore relational self-reflection in relation to the work of Paulo Freire, Resma Menakem, and Dr. Stephen Porges, and how to use this internal work to create welcoming learning communities. Learning Objectives: reveal the relational and interpersonal aspects of teaching.

Hybrid: No

The Living Library Project: Innovative Storytelling and Radical Listening

TILT TEF Alignment: Instructional Strategies

Presenter(s): Dr. Leah Holz, Instructor, LLC, & Elizabeth Sink, Honors Program

Description: We will present on the “Living Library Project,” which is a unique, semester-long, community engaged learning project and event from our Honors 192 “Constructive Communication Across Difference” course. This project is inspired by the Danish “Human Library Project,” where people (“books”) share their unique stories to audience members who “check out” that story, listen to it, and have a conversation. In Fall of 2024 during a contentious election cycle, and again in Spring of 2025, our students planned and led this event and they practiced self-reflection, curiosity, open-mindedness, professionalism, creativity, active listening, constructive dialogue, resiliency, and self-care. In this presentation we will discuss the planning, assignment scaffolding, and implementation of the Living Library Project and how it fits into our broader course. We will share ideas for how to use the project’s assignments and this type of storytelling in other disciplines and courses. Most importantly to illustrate this project, we will include an interactive element, with student volunteer examples that conference participants can “check out” during our panel timeslot. We aim to share our project as a model for what storytelling could look like in a classroom setting–as a means for building bridges and cultivating community.

Hybrid: No

What a Tale! Storytelling Tools to Drive Lessons Home

TILT TEF Alignment: Student Motivation

Presenter(s): David Pyle, Instructor, Arts Management

Description: How can you create context that brings lessons vividly to life, support UDL, and drive student engagement and success? How can you ensure that your students remember underlying principles? Storytelling is a powerful tool that we can always develop, cultivate, and refine. It brings immediacy to lessons in a way that list-filled lectures can’t. As teachers, we all use stories to one degree or another - but it's a skill - and an art - that can always be cultivated and continually refined. From limericks to live demos with dead bugs, this session will help you effectively turn a serviceable story into an unforgettable tale! It will show you how to improve your timing and make your "a-ha" land! We'll start with a range of proven examples and then we'll workshop some great storytelling solutions for you and your students.

Hybrid: No

Option 2 Breakout Sessions

TILT Accessibility Training

TILT TEF Alignment: Inclusive Pedagogy

Presenter(s): Andrew Swanson, TILT Accessibility Specialist

Description: A hybrid workshop from TILT Accessibility Specialists to prepare faculty to ensure our electronic systems and content support our community in compliance with state and federal laws and are accessible in a manner that allows everyone in our community to learn, thrive, and succeed.

Hybrid: Yes

Developing Students’ Critical Thinking Skills With Scaffolding and Deliberate Practice

TILT TEF Alignment: Instructional Strategies

Presenter(s): Dr. Mitchell Macrae, Assistant Teaching Professor, English

Description: We all know that critical thinking is an essential skill for college students. One of the looming concerns in higher education is that students may become overly reliant on ChatGPT or other AI models to do the hard work of thinking. The first step to create better critical thinkers in our classes is to help students recognize what kinds of critical thinking skills they’ll need to develop to be successful in our classes and in their chosen career fields. The second step in skill acquisition is to engage in deliberate practice. In this workshop, we’ll use learning taxonomies to identify the specific kinds of critical thinking students will need to hone or develop in order to succeed in our course assignments. Once we’ve identified the types of critical thinking skills a student will need, we can begin strategizing ways to scaffold assignments with these critical thinking skills in mind, while also designing course activities to include the deliberate practice of the critical thinking skills students will need. Sample assignments will be provide for participants to practice designing critical thinking activities, but participants are welcome and encouraged to bring their own assignments or course materials to workshop.

Hybrid: Yes

Experiential Learning: It's Neat, Sure, But Who’s Got the Time?

TILT TEF Alignment: Instructional Strategies

Presenter(s): Dr. Devon Fulford, Assistant Teaching Professor, English

Description: Experiential learning is learning through doing or having an experience. David Kolb (1984) is credited as the creator of the experiential learning model through four parts: experiencing, reflecting, learning/thinking, and active experimentation. How does experiential learning actually benefit students? The copious—and research-supported—benefits include increased motivation and engagement (Kong, 2021), soft skill enhancement (e.g., leadership, communication, teamwork, critical thinking) (Wiley, 2024), and the development of real-world skills applied in a safe environment (O’Toole, 2024). Students overwhelmingly believe that schools should offer hands-on projects. While 81% of students surveyed expressed a desire for experiential learning activities, only about 30% of educational institutions actually offer such opportunities (Wiley, 2024). Educators face barriers to implementing experiential learning such as lack of time, motivation, or preparation in experiential learning. This session offers a space to overcome the aforementioned obstacles by offering participants time, motivation, and information to feel empowered and prepared to design and implement experiential learning activities in their own classes.

Hybrid: Yes

Claiming An Adaptable Education: Fostering Engaged Learning Beyond The Classroom

TILT TEF Alignment: Inclusive Pedagogy

Presenter(s): Dr. Aaunterria T. Bollinger-Deters, Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies

Description: I will begin this hybrid session with an orienting talk regarding my 9-years of higher education instruction experience in a variety of departments/disciplines (i.e., Sociology, Philosophy, Radio/Television and Digital Media, Journalism and Media Communication, Communication Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women’s Studies, etc.), providing nuanced insights into how I have developed my instruction and assessment strategies with student success, classroom engagement, and knowledge retention beyond the classroom in mind. For the workshop portion of this session, I will ask participants to do some thoughtful worksheet activities to reflect upon their current teaching styles (ex. What do you find effective about your current teaching style? What improvement to your teaching style could bring a positive change to your classroom?), educational motivations (ex. What do you desire your students to learn in your classroom? How can you help to make those desires a reality?), and student learning support approaches (How do you currently support students learning? Are there areas of student learning support that you want to improve but don’t know how?) as well as allowing space to brainstorm about ways to increase student engagement with course materials/concepts, provide safe/resilient classroom spaces in which students can claim their education, create adaptive lesson plans to connect with new student interests, bolster knowledge applicability beyond the classroom, and cultivate innovative assessments that are meaningful for students. This session will conclude with some group reflection and open discussion relative to things that came up for participants in the lecture and workshop.

Hybrid: Yes

Option 3 Breakout Sessions

Engaging Students with Personalized AI Tools

TILT TEF Alignment: Student motivation

Presenter(s): Dr. Niroj Bhattarai, Associate Professor of Economics and Director of Online Studies

Description: This presentation showcases the development and use of a domain-specific GPT, built using ChatGPT, to enhance engagement in economics courses, particularly in capstone and intermediate macroeconomics. Designed to align with students’ familiarity with online platforms, this tool uses real-time data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to analyze inflation. Students interact dynamically with this data, exploring trends and implications while fostering critical thinking and curiosity. Early results indicate that this approach not only makes economics more approachable but also builds academic confidence and results in improved performance. This presentation will highlight the design, implementation, and the results of preliminary analysis of using AI in an intermediate level macroeconomics course.

Hybrid: No

Connecting with Students in Large AUCC Courses

TILT TEF Alignment: Classroom Climate

Presenter(s): Megan Bellamy-Lanz, DMA, Senior Instructor, Music and University Honors Program

Description: This workshop, "Connecting with Students in Large AUCC Courses," offers a collaborative forum for faculty navigating the unique challenges of large lecture environments. Participants will reflect on their experiences and explore innovative strategies for fostering meaningful student interactions that enhance learning outcomes. The session aims to collectively build a practical toolkit for Fall 2025 courses, focusing on actionable changes in teaching approaches and student interaction. Ultimately, this discussion-based workshop seeks to cultivate a supportive community among instructors dedicated to enriching the student experience in large AUCC settings.

Hybrid: No

Easing Up: Connecting Student Motivation and Instructor Stress

TILT TEF Alignment: Student Motivation

Presenter(s): Nancy Wright, Associate Teaching Professor, English

Description: Many instructors struggle with student motivation, a key to student success. Lack of motivation can show up in attendance problems, missing assignments, and lack of participation in class, among others. As instructors, we sometimes believe that increased rigidity in our policies and course work will force the student to engage, when often it has the exact opposite effect. It also causes stress for the instructor, who may feel more like a police officer than a teacher. In addition, rigidity does not model the life skills needed for a well-functioning community, such as flexibility and compassion. It also does not acknowledge that students are more than just students in our individual courses -- they have other course work, they work long hours, they have relationships and emergencies. The goal of this discussion-based workshop is to foster more ease with teaching by releasing faculty from traditional policy approaches. Faculty will learn (and brainstorm new) policy approaches that create a structure of accountability and responsibility, while still allowing a more humane approach to learning and lessening stress on the instructor.

Hybrid: No

Collaborative Documents: Co-Writing to Construct Knowledge and Community

TILT TEF Alignment: Instructional Strategies

Presenter(s): Dr. Aly Welker, Associate Teaching Professor, English

Description: In this interactive workshop, participants will explore how collaborative writing activities can foster community, creativity, and meaningful learning experiences. Shared writing, conducted in a shared document during class time, provides students with a unique opportunity to construct knowledge socially and rhetorically.
Participants should come prepared to engage in a live collaborative writing session. We will discuss how these practices can increase engagement, encourage community, and promote a classroom of curiosity and creativity. This session will also include space for instructors to develop their own collaborative writing prompts to use in the classroom.

Hybrid: No

College of Liberal Arts

Faculty Success
is Student Success

College of Liberal Arts Student Success
Professional Development Conference