Schedule

Roundtable: Crafting Competitive Proposals for Asher Endowed Funds

Speaker: Ryan Rudderham (Assistant Professor of Economics and Management, Co-Director of the Asher Office of Undergraduate Research and School of Business and Leadership Endowed Professor for Early Career Distinction) and Sarah Mordan-McCombs (Associate Professor of Biology,  Co-Director of the Asher Office of Undergraduate Research)

Join Ryan Rudderham and Sarah Mordan-McCombs (Co-Directors of the Asher Office of Undergraduate Research) for a workshop designed to help faculty prepare strong, competitive grant applications for the Asher Funds. Whether you are seeking funding for data collection, conference travel, research equipment, student-faculty collaborative projects, or course reassigned time, this session will provide clear strategies to refine your proposal and maximize your chances of receiving an award.

Career Planning Workshop: Sabbatical Lunch

Speaker: Bridget Gourley (Dean of Faculty, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry)

Are you planning an upcoming sabbatical or pre-tenure leave for AY27–28 or AY28–29? Join us for our annual planning lunch to get a head start on your application, explore funding pathways, and connect with colleagues. 

Note: Many external funding opportunities for projects have spring or summer 2027 deadlines, making early planning essential. 

What We’ll Cover: 

• Application Essentials: Review institutional processes, key timelines, and upcoming deadlines. 

• Funding Options: Explore ways to support your leave, including external funding opportunities. 

• Creative Sabbaticals: Gain fresh perspectives on pitching ambitious or unconventional projects. 

• Q&A & Peer Discussion: Ask questions and share insight with faculty colleagues. 

Key Upcoming Deadlines: 

• October 7, 2026 (6:00 PM): Fisher Fellowship Application deadline (for tenured faculty combining sabbatical with a fellowship semester). 

• October 28, 2026 (6:00 PM): AY27–28 Leave Application deadline. 

Can’t Attend? Resources will be shared with all eligible faculty. Simply complete the RSVP form to request access to the presentation folder. You are also welcome to schedule a one-on-one meeting (in-person or virtual) with Bridget Gourley by reaching out directly or contacting Erna Nobles. 

Faculty Development Coordinator Sylvia Yang is also available as a resource.

Roundtable: Let's Practice the Fundamentals of Modern AI

Speaker: Michael Boyles, (Director, Tenzer Technology Center) and Jin Kim (Instructional Technologist - AI Specialist, Faculty Instructional Technology Support)

In this hands-on session, the presenters will introduce the most basic elements and key vocabulary of generative AI. Through plenty of guided examples, participants will leverage Gemini for basic prompting and then learn and practice strategies for improving their prompts and the resulting AI responses.

Roundtable: Lessons & AI Tools from the Summer Faculty Learning Community

Speaker: Brooke Cox (Dean of the Library) and Sylvia Yang (Music, Media, and Creative Arts Librarian and Coordinator of Collections; Faculty Development Coordinator)

Join us for a retrospective panel featuring members of the Summer AI Faculty Learning Community (AILC). Facilitated by Brooke Cox (Dean of the Library) and Sylvia Yang (Faculty Development Coordinator), this eight-week summer cohort brought faculty together to explore the growing implications and applications of artificial intelligence in academic research and pedagogy. 

While the summer series concluded its weekly meetings in August, the practical work generated by the group lives on. In this panel, community members reconnect to showcase the tangible deliverables developed over the summer -- including course assignments designed to both leverage and thoughtfully navigate AI tools -- and reflect on how their participation in the AILC is actively shaping their research and teaching today.

Roundtable: OA Trivia & Public Good: Unlocking Liberal Arts Scholarship via the Institutional Repository

Speaker: Victoria Peters (Coordinator of Scholarly Communications and Resource Services)

Join Victoria Peters, Scholarly Communication and Resource Services Librarian, for an interactive, trivia-filled session during Open Access Week to test your campus knowledge and explore how open access protects scholarship. We’ll look at the history of DePauw’s Open Access policy, break down why "Green OA" offers a zero-cost path for faculty self-archiving, and show how our repository increases the impact of both faculty research and student scholarship. Beyond downloads, we will discuss how institutional repositories serve as vital infrastructure for defending intellectual freedom, preserving liberal arts inquiry, and keeping knowledge openly accessible to the world.

Roundtable: Supporting Student Success with The Learning Commons

Speaker: Lynn Ishikawa (Director of the Writing Center and Writing Program, and Associate Professor of English, Director of English for Academic Purposes), Matt Meier (Director of the Speaking and Listening Program and Center, and Associate Professor of Communication and Theatre)

How can we best support our students as they navigate complex writing assignments, quantitative problem sets, and oral presentations? Join us for an interactive faculty development session hosted by The Learning Commons (TLC) to explore strategies for integrating peer tutoring, assignment design, and discipline-specific support into your courses. 

Whether you teach foundational courses or upper-level seminars, this session will highlight how TLC’s three centers -- the Writing (W), Quantitative Reasoning (Q), and Speaking and Listening (S) -- can serve as vital extensions of your classroom.

Roundtable: Speech and Debate for AI-Resilient Pedagogy

Speakers: Tim Barr (Assistant Professor of Communication and Theatre, and Director of Debate) and Matt Meier (Director of the Speaking and Listening Program and Center, and Associate Professor of Communication and Theatre)

As generative AI forces us to re-evaluate our pedagogical practices, many educators are giving renewed attention to orality. But how should we think about designing, assessing, and giving feedback to students on assignments involving speech? How can debates be organized to have students engage more deeply with class material? What support exists for faculty who are experimenting with orality in their classrooms? This workshop will seek to answer these questions and give you adaptable strategies for incorporating orality as activities, assignments, or alternative assessments in your courses. (A workshop for designing successful oral examinations will be held separately.)

Colloquium: Deepa Prakash

Speaker: Deepa Prakash (Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Political Science Department)

Deepa’s interests in International Relations (IR)  lie in IR theory, especially pertaining to the role of non-state actors (NSAs) in IR and in how emotional politics drive and manifest in IR.

Deepa will present an early draft of an ongoing sabbatical project which focuses on the use and role of the growing influencer-verse in India in disseminating preferred foreign policy messages and narratives. Using a prominent scandal surrounding a popular youtube and podcast personality as a lens, her paper examines the complicated (and unpredictable) relationship between official, elite and popular cultural discourses of foreign policies and state identities. This relationship is difficult for either side to control, or predict and far from acting as a check on autocratic regimes, can also be a conduit for the regime’s preferred narratives. The paper engages with burgeoning interest in International Relations in the role of popular culture and new media in shaping popular conceptions of national interests, identities, and in legitimizing foreign policy actions. Deepa will contextualize this project in her broader interest in Non-State Actors and Popular-Culture in IR.

Roundtable: Supporting Well-being Together at DePauw

Speaker: Malorie McGee (Mental Health and Wellness Educator/Outreach Coordinator)

Created to foster a cohesive, holistic campus culture, the DePauw Well-Being Collaborative invites faculty and staff to attend an informational presentation on supporting student health and wellness campus-wide. Grounded in the belief that well-being is a dynamic state and a shared responsibility across our community, this session will highlight how our collective roles, interactions, and efforts empower students to reach their full potential. 

Join us for an overview of campus-wide efforts and engaging discussion on how we can continue to build a thriving culture of well-being together!