PKAL Regional Network
2024 Massachusetts PKAL Summer Meeting
June 12, 2024
–
Fitchburg State University
Fitchburg, Massachusetts
Description
Project Kaleidoscope is AAC&U's STEM Center of Higher Education reform initiatives dedicated to empowering all STEM faculty and administrators to graduate more students who are competitively trained in STEM disciplines and liberally educated for an increasingly technologically-based world. The PKAL Regional Networks provide low-cost, effective professional development opportunities for STEM faculty and administrators to foster a caring community, explore and advance modern undergraduate STEM pedagogies, disseminate findings from undergraduate STEM research and practice, and promote STEM faculty career advancement.
This year’s Massachusetts PKAL Regional Network Summer Meeting will revisit themes from past meetings and provide an opportunity for STEM faculty to share updates, celebrate successes, and describe new directions in pedagogical reform.
Meeting themes may address (but are not limited to) the following:
- Undergraduate STEM teaching that supports foundational skills (e.g., reading, writing, quantitative reasoning, information literacy)
- STEM skill transfer across disciplines and from the classroom to the workplace
- Integrating research and other high impact practices into the STEM classroom and curriculum
- Supporting diverse students through pedagogical practices, faculty development, and/or academic structures
- Community-based research in STEM programs
Keynote Speaker
Kristin Wobbe, Ph.D.
Director for the Center of Project-Based Learning
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
On the Journey Together
We’re never really done perfecting our teaching, but in this session, we’ll celebrate the things, big or small, that we’ve done recently to improve our students’ learning experiences. We’ll consider the common themes and review the research to determine the elements that best support student learning. I’ll share some recent findings about the long-term impacts of high-quality projects on our students. And before we go, we’ll spend some time identifying current challenges and crowd-sourcing solutions. The goal is for everyone to leave with a new idea, feeling like this was time well spent.
Registration Now Open
IN PERSON
The event registration fee is $55 per person for full time faculty and administrators. Registration is FREE for community college faculty, contingent / part time faculty, graduate students and post-docs; registration is still required.
VIRTUAL
The event registration fee for virtual streaming of the plenary session is $20. The registration deadline is June 10, 2024.
Massachusetts PKAL Regional Meeting Host
Your host for this meeting is Dr. Elizabeth Gordon, Professor of Earth Science at Fitchburg State University. For more information about the meeting, please contact Dr. Gordon directly.
