Institutes

ePortfolios—digital repositories of student work—allow faculty and other educational professionals to help students organize, preserve the forms of, and reflect upon their learning. In this yearlong institute, participants discover how to best ideate, design, and implement ePortfolios according to their unique needs. Teams of administrators, educators, and student leaders develop and then actualize an ePortfolio strategy under the guidance of institute faculty, identifying and addressing challenges as they arise. This institute is ideal for any campus, state system, or consortium aiming to redesign learning for students using ePortfolios.

Through a focus on curricular and cocurricular alignment, defined learning and skill development, and high-impact experiences, campus teams will engage with experts from both higher education and industry to advance curriculum-based projects that promote equity and student success through meaningful career preparation. The Institute’s approach to innovation emphasizes design-thinking, broad and inclusive interdisciplinary perspectives, collaboration across stakeholders, and systemic commitments to equity that prepare students to seek purpose across an array of career paths.

In bringing people together across lines of religious difference, a campus serves as both a laboratory and a model for how diverse societies can thrive and as a launching pad for the next generation of leaders who can transform diversity into engaged and productive pluralism. The annual Institute on Teaching and Learning for Campus-wide Interfaith Excellence focuses on the integration of interfaith cooperation into campus life and on the development of civic interfaith leaders.

The changing demographic landscape of higher education demands that colleges and universities adapt more daring approaches to institutional change that are equally evidence-based and culturally responsive. This transformative event sensitizes STEM reformers to the ways in which institutional systems and structures disproportionately disadvantage STEM faculty and students of color, and other marginalized groups. It emphasizes accountability through critical questioning, critique, deep reflection, and introspection of self, department, and institution.

Forward-looking institutions recognize the value of cultivating leadership capacity among STEM faculty and administrators. To this end, the PKAL STEM Leadership Institute empowers STEM faculty, principal investigators, and administrators to recognize their leadership strengths, navigate the politics of change, address conflicts, and restructure the institutional systems that limit America’s capacity for global competitiveness in STEM fields. Through experiential learning, reflection, and the simulation of diverse lived experiences, participants gain the skills and tools to embrace difference, initiate social change, and guide reform in undergraduate STEM education.