Kick Off Event May 29 - Join us!

As our institutions respond to the COVID-19 pandemic’s uncertain consequences, strategic priorities come into even sharper focus. Four LACOL Presidents will share their views and answer questions virtually.

Showcase and Online Pedagogy Forum

As faculty have worked through the emergency pivot to remote teaching this spring, many remarkable solutions have been improvised, invented, and discovered. 

Through the LACOL Faculty Showcase and discussion forum, tap into the collective insights of LACOL faculty, staff, and students who navigated this world of remote teaching. Share, reflect and discuss what's on your mind today - and explore teaching possibilities and flexible designs for the future. 

Break-out opportunities abound for faculty to engage by discipline with their LACOL colleagues at peer institutions. 

Mini online teaching workshop with Flower Darby

Pedagogies to teach online with flexibility and care are mission critical these days. Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes by F. Darby and J. Lang (Jossey-Bass, 2019) is a highly readable volume loaded with evidence-based suggestions that can be easily adapted to your own teaching.  Bring your questions to the June 15 Zoom meet-up to exchange ideas and gain expert advice from educator and author Flower Darby. More about the book and webinar.

Planning to read Small Teaching Online? Join in the LACOL Virtual Reading Group to discuss liberal arts applications with LACOL colleagues in your discipline.

Building Community Online - Lessons Learned from Carleton Cube

Running annually since 2016, Carleton College’s CUBE program is a fully-online summer bridge experience designed to support entering students in developing their quantitative skills.  A great benefit of the program has been the discovery of numerous ways to build a sense of community among the online cohort and connect students to campus, before they arrive on campus.  

In this presentation and discussion, founding CUBE director Prof. Melissa Eblen Zayas will explore the design of CUBE and how similar strategies to engage students remotely may be adapted in our current times. In addition, there will be the opportunity for participants to share ideas about online community-building efforts that courses or programs tried this spring.

LACOL Summer Data Science Panel

Now in its second year, Introduction to Data Science is a fully-online summer class co-taught by a multi-campus LACOL team. The class is designed as a collaborative, socially relevant, discussion-oriented online classroom experience in the style of liberal arts colleges. 

Student demand and demonstrable learning gains through the online summer class propel this LACOL experiment forward. A driving question for the team remains: how can liberal arts learning best be achieved online?  Tune into this panel discussion to hear directly from the data science faculty on their course design and the lessons learned - many insights proving useful when times demand flexible course delivery.

Building a Teaching and Learning Center, Vassar's Journey

Student-centered faculty development is often advanced through Teaching and Learning Centers - even when those “functions” may not occur in a discrete office or physical space and these days may be fully virtual. Vassar College is in the midst of envisioning a new Center.  Professor J. Kahn and fellow faculty of the Vassar College Inclusive Pedagogy and Curriculum Working Group will share their journey and how they’ve worked to integrate multiple constituencies, pedagogies, and teaching styles. 

In February 2020, the coronavirus crisis forced Duke Kunshan University’s students and faculty to scatter across the globe and move online.  Duke University, DKU's US partner, was soon to follow as the arrival of the global pandemic triggered a near universal pivot to remote instruction. "Even as educational institutions are threatened, learning continues. And perhaps even grows. But it does so in new spaces," says Matthew Rascoff whose digital innovation team guided the institution through both these rapid transitions. 

For the LACOL 2020 closing Keynote How to Change Institutions with Purpose on June 30, Matthew Rascoff (Duke University) and Emily Levine (Stanford University) will draw on their research collaboration into the history of education and innovation to probe how mission-driven liberal arts institutions can adapt and change in the face of extraordinary challenge. More on the Rascoff/Levine Keynote Address.