TEACHx 2025: Full Schedule

10:45am CDT

Celebrating Pedagogical Innovation: Insights from Award-Winning Educators

Thursday May 22, 2025 10:45am - 11:30am CDT

Join us for an insightful and multi-disciplinary panel discussion featuring winners of Northwestern’s University Teaching Awards, who exemplify excellence in undergraduate classroom teaching. Following Bowen’s keynote, we will delve further into the student-instructor connection. Panelists will describe their commitment to fostering student belonging and success. We will explore how these educators are leveraging innovative technologies, creating immersive learning experiences, and honing students’ critical thinking to grapple with wicked problems. Additionally, the panel will discuss effective strategies for driving meaningful assessment and student success. We will close the conversation with reflections on the importance of safeguarding instructor vitality and questions from the audience. Hosted by the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching and moderated by Senior Director, Jennifer Keys.

Moderators

Jennifer Keys

Senior Director, Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching

Speakers

Mei-Ling Hopgood

William F. Thomas Professor, Northwestern University

Mei-Ling Hopgood is a freelance journalist and author of Lucky Girl and How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm. She has been a recipient of the National Headliner Best in Show, ICIJ Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting and several other investigative and enterprise... Read More →

Barbara Butts

Associate Professor of Instruction, Theatre, Northwestern University

Ilya Mikhelson

Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Associate Professor of Instruction, Northwestern University

Michael Beltran

Director of 3D Printing and Rapid Prototyping Lab Senior Lecturer Charles Deering McCormick Distinguished Lecturer, Northwestern University

Lilah Shapiro

Assistant Professor of Instruction, School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University

Thursday May 22, 2025 10:45am - 11:30am CDT
Lake Room

Panel Discussion

Subject Student Success and Assessment

10:45am CDT

Using Data-Driven Teaching to Drive Assessment Design and Student Success

Thursday May 22, 2025 10:45am - 11:30am CDT

Big Ten Room

Reflective, data-driven teaching practices help instructors answer the question, "How do I know if what I'm doing in the classroom is working?" Importantly, engaging in reflective cycles of teaching, collecting data, and making changes based upon data (see Brookfield, 2017) can inform assessment design and strategies for student success.

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence's Action Research Scholars program at the University of Illinois Chicago builds capacity for instructors to systematically investigate the efficacy of their teaching. The program uses a scaffolded approach grounded in an ethos of care for instructor well-being by providing training, connections to campus experts, and space for dialogue and community with peers across disciplines. The program culminates in an IRB approved research plan, data collection, and dissemination of findings.

During the session, participants will hear from instructors who have completed the program. Moderators will ask panelists about their research questions, study design, and findings; issues of power and marginalization that they navigated; challenges they faced; and the impact of their study on their assessments and students' learning experience. Moderators will lead participants through a reflective teaching exercise in which participants will brainstorm with colleagues about strategies to implement data-driven teaching in their contexts.

Moderators

Crystal Tse

Associate Director for Faculty Engagement in Action Research, University of Illinois Chicago

Speakers

Trischa Duke

Senior Lecturer, University of Illinois Chicago

Tara Driscoll

Clinical Assistant Professor, University of Illinois Chicago

April Andry Rahman

Assistant Director of Education Research / Adjunct Instructor, University of Illinois Chicago / Chicago State University

I'm an educational developer in the University of Illinois Chicago's Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence and adjunct faculty in the Nontraditional Degree Programs at Chicago State University. I bridge teaching and research with Black feminist homeplace pedagogies that... Read More →

Laura Thorp

Clinical Associate Professor, University of Illinois Chicago

Thursday May 22, 2025 10:45am - 11:30am CDT
Big Ten Room

Panel Discussion

Subject Student Success and Assessment

10:45am CDT

What is “Good” Writing?: Perspectives from The Writing Place

Thursday May 22, 2025 10:45am - 11:30am CDT

Wildcat Room

The Writing Place is Northwestern's peer-to-peer writing center. This presentation will synthesize the research and experience of Writing Place tutors and administrators to explore the question, "What is 'good' writing?" The first 10 minutes of the session will introduce existing scholarly conversations on the teaching of writing and writing assessment as presented through the lens of writing center studies. Writing centers operate within interstitial spaces of the university, providing one-on-one feedback on student writing at a remove from the hierarchies of the classroom. Students trained to work at the Writing Place sometimes experience a disconnect between the theoretical tutoring philosophies that they learn during their tutor instruction and the real-life expectations of faculty. Our 25-minute moderated panel discussion will dig into topics such as linguistic diversity, the pressures of writing assessment on the student writing experience, and assumed conventions of "good" writing from the perspective of the writing center tutors and administrators. In the last 10 minutes, panelists will lead small break-out group conversations with the audience.

Moderators

Meaghan Fritz

Assistant Professor of Instruction, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

Meaghan Fritz received her PhD in English in 2018 from Northwestern University, where she specialized in nineteenth-century American women’s literature. She teaches College Seminars, First-Year Writing Seminars, Practical Rhetoric, and Writing and Speaking in Business in the Weinberg... Read More →

Speakers

Elizabeth Lenaghan

Professor of Instruction, Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences

Amelia Hurley

Student and Undergraduate Writing Consultant at the Main Library Writing Place, School of Education and Social Policy

Thursday May 22, 2025 10:45am - 11:30am CDT
Wildcat Room

Panel Discussion

Subject Student Success and Assessment

TEACHx 2025

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