Friday, May 2nd, 2025 | 10am | Online
Each year, the conference brings together roughly 300 faculty, staff, and other members of the DePaul community to share knowledge, promote effective teaching practices, and improve student learning experiences across the University. The 30th Annual Teaching and Learning Conference will be held online. The conference is sponsored by DePaul’s Center for Teaching and Learning, the Division of Student Affairs, and the Division of Mission and Ministry. The Writing Center is a key contributor to the planning of the conference.
Register for the Conference
About the Keynote and Keynote Speaker
Keynote Speaker Katie Rose Guest Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., is a bipolar-autistic author, speaker, lawyer, and law professor. With a law degree and a doctorate in rhetoric, she is an expert in public discourse and how it influences policy. She has spent nearly two decades researching neurodiversity and how to make the world more accessible to all people.
She is the author of more than fifteen books that center neurodiversity and mental health. Her latest book, A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education (University Press of Kansas, 2024). She is also the author Life of the Mind Interrupted: Essays on Mental Health and Disability in Higher Education (Blue Crow, 2017).
Dr. Pryal is a frequent speaker, writer, and media guest for venues such as The New York Times, Slate, Al-Jazeera, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and more, and she publishes research on neurodiversity and mental health. An avid equestrian, she founded NeuroEq, an organization dedicated to inclusion of neurodiversity in the equestrian community. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Reckoning with Mental Health and Neurodiversity in Higher Education
Higher education communities are facing a mental health crisis that has been a long time coming—but Dr. Pryal, expert in mental health and neurodiversity in higher education communities, has answers. In this talk, she helps audiences understand what neurodiversity is, how stigma harms neurodivergent students and faculty in higher education communities, and how to bring neurodivergent community members into the fold.
Call for Proposals
DePaul University faculty and staff are invited to submit proposals for the 30th Annual Teaching and Learning Conference. For 2025, we are seeking 20-minute (or less) presentations on teaching and learning best practices, followed by approximately 30 minutes of breakout discussion facilitation. The conference will be fully online, and sessions will be facilitated over Zoom.
Topics may include:
- Student success across course modalities
- Innovative teaching methods
- Effective use of technology
- Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in teaching and learning
- Integrating DePaul’s mission in the classroom
- Students and global citizenship
- Managing burnout
- Culturally responsive teaching
- Strategies for using generative AI as a teaching tool
General Questions to Consider:
- What aspect of your teaching are you most proud of that you could share with others?
- How does your teaching help to realize DePaul’s Vincentian Mission?
- How do you collaborate with your colleagues to help students succeed?
- What evidence do you use to identify effective teaching practices, and how do you adjust when something isn’t working?
Submit a Proposal
The proposal submission deadline is March 7th, 2025,
with notification of decisions sent to presenters by
April 4th, 2025. All proposals will be reviewed anonymously by the conference planning committee, using criteria such as clarity, adaptability, originality, fit, and interactivity.