Keynote: “Being Human in Inhumane Times” 
It’s no secret that teaching in higher education feels more fraught than ever. Our current social and political moment, along with the lingering aftershocks of Covid-19 and “pandemic pedagogy,” has made our work difficult indeed. From disengaged students to expanding workloads to a precarious climate for higher ed in general, things are increasingly atomized; the work we’re doing feels transactional, as opposed to transformational. How do we (re)discover the humanity, the humane-ness, that makes teaching and learning truly meaningful—even transformative—for all of us? This talk will suggest a conceptual framework and specific strategies to do that rediscovering, and offer some ways to advocate for ourselves and our students while doing so.
Workshop: Putting Principles Into Practice
This interactive session will further explore the themes raised in the morning keynote, with a focus on specific ways we can humanize teaching and learning with our own students. In particular, we’ll use James Lang’s idea of small teaching—the use of evidence-based strategies that are easy to implement, yet pay dividends beyond that small investment—to brainstorm ideas we can take into our classes right away, should we choose to do so.
Presenter’s Biography
Kevin Gannon is Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence (CAFÉ) and Professor of History at Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina. He spent nearly 25 years as a faculty member, serving as a program coordinator and department chair along the way, until moving full-time into faculty development. He is the author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (West Virginia University Press, 2020), and the co-editor of the forthcoming collection The Campus Crisis Toolkit: Strategies and Solidarity for the Rest of Us (SUNY Press). His writing has appeared in outlets such as Vox, CNN, and The Washington Post, and he is a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Even in an administrative role, Kevin continues to work with first-year students (a particular passion of his) by teaching sections of Queens’ new student seminar course, the Queens Roadmap, every fall semester.