Spring 2025 Events

January 30, Thursday; 11:30 am - 12:30 pm - Program Goals and Program Review - Alignment of Assessment and Program Review  
How do we approach Cyclical Program Review, Assessment, and Data for program development, building resources, and (a little bit) for accreditation 

March 6, Thursday; 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Please be ready to name one idea that sticks with you / touches you the most.  And please send in discussion questions you might be interested in bringing up. 
Looking forward to the discussion and thank you!!

Catharine Denial, Pedagogy of Kindness - Find it in Hamline Library

"... Academia is not, by and large, a kind place. Individualism and competition are what count. But without kindness at its core, Catherine Denial suggests, higher education fails students and instructors—and its mission—in critical ways.

Part manifesto, part teaching memoir, part how-to guide, A Pedagogy of Kindness urges higher education to get aggressive about instituting kindness, which Denial distinguishes from niceness. Having suffered beneath the weight of just “getting along,” instructors need to shift every part of what they do to prioritizing care and compassion—for students as well as for themselves.

A Pedagogy of Kindness articulates a fresh vision for teaching, one that focuses on ensuring justice, believing people, and believing in people. Offering evidence-based insights and drawing from her own rich experiences as a professor, Denial offers practical tips for reshaping syllabi, assessing student performance, and creating trust and belonging in the classroom. Her suggestions for concrete, scalable actions  outline nothing less than a transformational discipline—one in which, together, we create bright new spaces, rooted in compassion, in which all engaged in teaching and learning might thrive..."

February 20, Thursday; 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Kevin Schwandt, English and Communication Studies

Culturally-Responsive Fine Arts History Pedagogy

The arts and humanities, particularly in liberal arts institutions, have for decades struggled with how to balance the preservation of a central “canon,” generally defined through 19th-century frameworks of value, with an ever-changing student population that desires and deserves more. My own discipline, musicology, has engaged in a self-reflective struggle to contend with its origins in German nationalism since at least the 1990s. Yet, new approaches to teaching music history are often met with resistance. 

Last academic year, I was tasked with developing an explicitly “anti-racist music history curriculum” for Augsburg University, which I also translated into teaching the Music History sequence at the University of Minnesota School of Music. Building upon my experiences and the experiences of my students, supported by music scholars such as Philip Ewell, Fred Maus, and Susan McClary, I propose that a culturally-responsive and -responsible approach to teaching music—as well as other fine arts and humanities subjects—need not do away with the Western canon. Rather, student-directed, thematic, experiential learning promotes personal investment in artistic expression, shaped by cultural context. 

March 27, Thursday; 11:30 am - 12:30 pm 

Kim Lartz, Performance, Production, and Community

Idea Generation & Creativity

Focus on idea generation, brainstorming, and quick expression of ideas in this hands-on creativity workshop. We’ll have multiple speed round design prompts where you will create an environment or character from a wacky prompt. During each round, you’ll draw or write to express your ideas. It’s like a creative brain workout circuit. 

**no drawing skills necessary, art supplies provided**