Inaugural Conference
July 8 & July 29, 2021

We invite you to join us as we consider how to re-envision introductory STEM curricula where cultivating students' critical thinking and logical reasoning skills are intentionally and explicitly prioritized

#TeachingCTinSTEM

To Access Conference Materials (recordings, etc.), Click Here

Day 1: Thursday, July 8, 2021

Zoom Link: https://pima.zoom.us/j/96921881547

9:05 am – 9:30 am PDT

Welcome & Introduction & Definitions

Mays Imad

(To access the presentation, click here)

9:30 am – 10:30 am PDT

Keynote: Finding the Goldilocks Zone in the Classroom: Intellectual Empathy and Critical Thinking

Maureen Linker

(To access "Social Perceptions Interview Exercise" click here)

10:30 am – 10:45 am PDT

Break

10:45 am – 11:30 am PDT

Teaching Critical Thinking in STEM: Sample Assignment
Malcolm Campbell

(To access respective documents, click here)

11:30 am – 11:45 am PDT

Break

11:45 am – 12:30 pm PDT

Assessing Critical Thinking in STEM
Jeff Olimpo & Ryan Korstange

(To access the presentation, click here. For more information about assessment, click here)

12:30 pm – 1:00 pm PDT

Invitation to Construct Your Own Assignment

Javier Robalino & Oscar Fernandez

(To access respective documents, click here)

1:00 pm PDT

End of Day 1

Opening Keynote: Dr. Maureen Linker

Finding the Goldilocks Zone in the Classroom: Intellectual Empathy and Critical Thinking

By Maureen Linker, PhD

Astronomers use the term “Goldilocks Zone” to refer to a region of space in which a planet is just the right distance from its home star to be habitable or to maintain a “life zone.” The surface of a planet in the Goldilocks Zone cannot be so hot or so cold that liquid water would either freeze completely, or evaporate out into space. I am going to use this metaphor of a just right zone for explaining some of what goes on in the space of our classrooms, specifically classrooms that engage students with perceptual methods in the context of social reality and cultural differences.

Some of us, intentionally or not, may ignore, ostracize, render invisible, stereotype, leave completely alone, or interpret some perceptual data as ‘alien.’ But what would it mean to see through other eyes, to consider alternative ways of experiencing and try to understand how we may be perceived by others? In this talk, we will consider how sharing empirical information, particularly from the subjective standpoint, can increase mutual respect, effective communication, and increased knowledge, without becoming so hot we lose the ability to analyze or so cold that we lose the ability to think effectively.

Day 2: Thursday, July 29, 2021

Zoom Link: https://pima.zoom.us/j/96921881547

Closing Keynote: Dr. Bayo Akomolafe

To think, one must become lost: The sensuous sociomateriality of critical thinking in fugitive times

By Bayo Akomolafe, PhD

Without a doubt, these very interesting times of converging epochal, epidemiological and existential crises compel us to rethink the ways we come to think about the world. Higher education is burdened with the task of producing critical thinkers who can help us navigate the challenges we collectively face today. But who is "us"? Who are these critical thinkers called to save the day? Can the ethical intensities within the ruins of collapse continue to support the idea that critical thinking is a singular set of skills available to individuals, or are we being invited to move away from these phallic, anthropocentric conceptualizations of criticality as a cognition-bound, human-bound event? In this talk, Bayo Akomolafe thinks through the conditions of becoming lost (as an indigenous concept of extending relationality to the more-than-human) and the racialized somatic-semiotic networks that make criticality possible, calling for new sense-making projects that spill away from the Anthropos.