Session 2 (11:00 - 11:45)

Student Engagement/Retention Through High Impact Learning Practices
Fireside Chat |  Room 218

Speakers: Andrew Bergerson, Izabel Galliera, Greg Vonnahme, Davin Watne

Description: This session features faculty in the visual arts, social sciences and humanities who have designed highly engaged learning practices both inside and outside of the classroom. Whether they are built-in curricular activities such as painting a mural with community partners, incorporating a congressional internship in Jefferson City within a classroom structure, translating theoretical learning into practical curatorial experience through a public exhibition project curated by students, to a co-researched, designed, and executed study away class (called the Missouri "Round Robin" organized by faculty and undergraduate students at UMKC and UMSL), these courses emphasize both liberal arts skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and analysis while simultaneously incorporating career readiness into their applications. For example, the Missouri Round Robin course in History was enriched with a layer of instruction and support by a small grant by Career Services. Each speaker will highlight how various transferable skills are incorporated into the course. For example, Davin Watne's Mural Design and Production Course pairs students with clients in community. On the ground, students gain hands-on experience translating their designs to large scale productions. This process involves several challenges including conceptual thinking, working as a team, solving technical issues and the development of large-scale drafting skills. Each faculty member in this Fireside Chat brings both highly specialized research skills in addition to technical skills; The panel implicitly argues that both sets of core competencies are essential to navigate future careers and become global citizens.

Learning Through Volunteering: Incorporating Volunteer Experiences into a Course to Explore Course Concepts and Develop Critical Thinking

Fireside Chat | Room 213

Speaker: Jessica Magana

Description: Students often want to become involved in their communities, but many competing demands on their time make involvement challenging. This one-credit-hour course, part of the Honors Program's "Honors Leader Program," guides students in thoughtful volunteering that fits in their schedule as students explore the broader context of the volunteer organizations' missions. This course format could be adapted to many fields. This presentation explains course structure and student feedback, then invites discussion of future modifications for a range of fields.

Improving Student Attendance

Fireside Chat | Room 212

Speakers: Leila Borvayeh, Alysse Weigand

Description: The goal of this discussion group is to share observations, identify possible causes for declining attendance, and exchange effective strategies that instructors have used to encourage regular participation. By understanding the underlying factors, we aim to explore both individual and department-level approaches to support improved attendance. 

Key Discussion Points:

• Current attendance trends and challenges faced by faculty.

• Potential contributing factors (e.g., post-COVID learning habits, hybrid or flexible schedules, increased workload, student motivation, reliance on AI resources, personal or financial stressors, etc.).

• Effective attendance policies, course structures, or engagement techniques used by instructors.

• Possible department-wide initiatives or support systems that could promote better attendance.

• Methods for tracking attendance and responding to absenteeism in constructive, student-centered ways.

• Opportunities for early intervention and collaboration with advising, academic support services, or student success offices.

Kansas City Futurist: AI, Heinlein, and the Institutional Economics of Imagined Futures

Fireside Chat |  Room 211

Speaker: Larry Wigger

Description: Robert Heinlein, Missouri-born architect of science-fiction futures, filled his stories with institutional experiments: revolutions, technocracies, frontiers, and crises. Heinlein’s literary work vividly illustrates tensions among the powerful societal institutions of economics, governance, science, technology, religion, and culture, highlighting their profound impacts on economic power dynamics, individual freedoms, and social equity. By text-mining his complete oeuvre with GPT-5.1, this project uncovers how Heinlein modeled economic power and institutional tension well outside formal policy debates. This session shares insights from the AI-human research collaboration, highlights transparent methods for large-scale textual analysis, and invites faculty to imagine how AI can help surface new perspectives in their own disciplines.