Call for Proposals

Submission Guidelines

• Developing and Submitting a Proposal

  The online proposal form includes fields requesting the following information:

  • Name, title, discipline, institution name (and Carnegie Classification), and email address for each facilitator
  • Session theme and format
  • Session title (75-character limit, including spaces)
  • Anticipated participant learning outcomes (100-word limit)
  • Background and evidence of effectiveness of work being presented (250-word limit)
  • Plan for participant engagement (150-word limit; required for workshops, optional for other session types)
  • Brief description to be used in conference program if accepted (2–3 sentences for a total of 75–125 words. Descriptions should summarize the above fields and highlight what is distinctive and transferrable about the work to be presented)
  • Level of work: beginner, intermediate, or advanced.

• Proposal Review Criteria

  AAC&U strives to offer a balanced, informative, and thought-provoking conference focused on frameworks for undergraduate liberal education. We seek to empower and embolden campus educators to provide a coherent, purposeful undergraduate experience for all students, with emphasis on effective pathways from cornerstone to capstone at two- and four-year institutions.

  The proposal selection committee will include experienced academic professionals from a diverse range of backgrounds and areas of expertise. Successful proposals will represent evidence-based theory-to-practice models that have proven effective in creating coherent, purposeful undergraduate experiences for all students. Successful proposals may also represent models that emerged rapidly over the past year and for which a case can be made that the models are likely to prove effective through empirical inquiry over time. Successful proposals will also involve practitioners from across a campus or institution. The following elements serve as criteria for proposal selection:

  • Presentations should have the potential to advance new approaches to integrating general education with the major, demonstrating the centrality of general education in connecting student learning with critical issues that matter to students and to society.
  • Sessions should include models that connect research and scholarship with effective, equity-focused courses, curricula, pedagogies, assessment practices, and campus cultures that engage all students in high-quality learning experiences.
  • Sessions should offer creative, novel, and transformative mechanisms for designing general education and assessment.
  • Presentations should provide evidence of effectiveness, lessons learned, challenges overcome, and applicability across a range of institutional types.
  • Sessions should include explicit plans for involving participants in reflection, discussion, exercises, and other activities that will help them understand and apply the material.

  Priority will be given to proposals that reflect innovations and perspectives from multiple disciplines, programmatic areas, and institutions. We particularly welcome student perspectives.

• Conference Tracks

  We invite proposals for individual or panel presentations on topics related to the following conference tracks:

  • Curricular Reform, Redesign, and Change

  Sessions in this track will highlight the efficacy of general education structures, approaches to (re)design and/or strategies for implementation, and exemplar theories of change as well as pragmatic advice for navigating policies and politics implicated in reform efforts.

  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

  Sessions in this track will address access, affordability, and student success, including transfer issues and the alignment of general education curricular structures, pedagogical approaches, and outcomes with larger institutional diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

  • Meaningful Assessment

  Sessions in this track will emphasize the interconnected nature of teaching, learning, and assessment; leveraging institutional data to understand patterns of student progress and achievement; and creating compelling stories through powerful data visualization.

  • Teaching and Learning

  Sessions in this track will expand conceptions of what is possible in the general education classroom by sharing equity-minded pedagogical approaches and strategies for centering diverse lived experiences on the syllabus as well as in the classroom, regardless of gen ed structures or course/program modality.

  • Career Relevance and Readiness

  Sessions in this track will focus on strengthening connections between general education and employability/career success through high-impact educational practices, career-relevant teaching techniques, and creative institutional-employer partnerships.

  • The Ethics of Learning

  Sessions in this track will address academic integrity and/or digital ethics from the student, faculty, and administrative perspectives, highlighting the ethical challenges facing students and faculty in traditional and online courses; shared responsibility for academic integrity; and teaching, learning, and assessment techniques that promote academic integrity as an ethical framework/ethos, not just a compliance issue.

• Session Formats

  Poster Session (60 minutes; 1–2 presenters)
  Poster presenters share visual models of research findings; general education course, program, and curricular or cocurricular designs; concept maps; assessment rubrics and feedback loops; faculty development, support, and reward programs and policies; frameworks for design thinking and strategic planning; and high-impact practices. The poster session provides an opportunity for presenters to talk with attendees about how to apply findings to their own work.

  Dialogue for Learning (60 minutes; 1–4 presenters)

  Dialogue for Learning sessions provide time for colleagues to examine timely and potentially provocative topics of similar interest through the iterative sharing of expertise and experiences. They provide an opportunity to work through issues, ideas, and challenges from multiple perspectives. The facilitators’ job is to kickstart small group conversations that then feed into a collective discussion of the question at hand. These dialogues may address the following questions:

  • How can general education be organized to result in student integration of learning across content areas?
  • How can general education designs improve students’ ways of knowing?
  • How can siloed organizational structures be made coherent and purposeful?
  • How can general education be a sense-making and meaning-making experience for students?
  • How can academic structures and systems that were created for a different time and place be critically examined and reshaped?
  • How can faculty professional development for student success be supported and recognized?
  • How can assessment processes and results be made to matter for students and faculty?
  • What if the critics are correct, and much of how assessment is currently conducted is wrong?

  Proposals for Dialogue for Learning sessions should briefly set the context for the conversation related to one of the conference themes and should clearly articulate the intended audience in terms of institutional type, position, or particular area of practice. Facilitators assist the group in examining new ways of thinking about the topic and strategies for moving forward given the professional reality and expertise of each individual in the room.

  Theory-to-Practice Workshops (75 minutes each; 2–4 presenters)

  Workshops provide opportunities for participants to bridge theory and practice. Facilitators should guide participants in examining critical theories and scholarly evidence that support the mechanics of how to develop purposeful general education courses, curricula, pedagogies, practices, pathways, or strategies that integrate learning with the majors in the context of real-world issues. Facilitators should provide scholarship and evidence related to the topic and engage participants in reflection, discussion, and design work. Reviewers will give priority to proposals that model high-impact practices such as collaborative and hands-on activities, those that include a diversity of facilitators, and those that explain how the work applies to other institutional types.

  Pecha Kucha (6 minutes; 1 presenter recommended)

  Pecha Kucha (“chit chat” in Japanese) sessions combine visual and oral presentations to convey a creative endeavor, research finding, or other interesting activity related to a particular conference theme. A Pecha Kucha presentation, which consists of 20 slides running for 20 seconds each, is carefully orchestrated to articulate key elements featured in each slide. Three Pecha Kucha presentations will be combined with 30 minutes of discussion time to create one 60-minute session. The following link provides an overview and guidelines for designing a Pecha Kucha presentation: http://avoision.com/pechakucha.

• Additional Information

  The deadline for submitting proposals is Monday, September 20, 2021. Upon submission of a proposal, the primary session contact should receive an automatic message indicating that AAC&U has received the proposal. If the contact does not receive this message (and it is not in his/her spam filter), please email [email protected].

  Notifications

  The primary session presenter will receive notice via email of the decision regarding the proposal in early November.

  Registration Fees and Travel Expenses

  All session presenters are responsible for paying the conference registration fees as well as any travel and hotel expenses.

  Session Times

  Presentation times will occur from the evening of Thursday, February 10, through the afternoon of Saturday, February 12. Please ensure that all individuals listed in the proposal have this information and can be available at the appropriate time during the event.

  AAC&U Meeting Sponsors

  AAC&U's Sponsorship program provides nonprofits, companies, publishers, and other organizations the opportunity to showcase their products and services while exchanging information with members of a higher education audience. For more information about sponsorship opportunities, please go to AAC&U Sponsorships or email us at [email protected].

  Proposals that promote products or services available for purchase will not be considered through the standard proposal process described above.

  Questions

  If you have questions or need additional information, please email [email protected].