Teaching Effectiveness Symposium

*Note: Event image created by ChatGPT 4.o using the prompt: "Generate an image of a teaching symposium in a beautiful university ballroom featuring the words 'Teaching Symposium.'"

The Teaching Effectiveness Symposium is CTE's hallmark program for SMU faculty. This year's keynote is Dr. Betsy Barre, Executive Director of Wake Forest University's Center for the Advancement of Teaching.

Speaker Biography

(written with the assistance of ChatGPT 4.o which was asked to summarize a variety of resources)

After receiving her Ph.D. in Religious Ethics in 2009, Barre began her career as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Lake Forest College through a postdoctoral fellowship program focused on teaching in liberal arts colleges. This experience deepened her commitment to undergraduate education, leading her to a position as Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Marymount Manhattan College. In 2012, she transitioned to a hybrid faculty-administrative role at Rice University, where she contributed to the Program in Writing and Communication and later became a founding Assistant Director and then Associate Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence. Barre developed numerous instructional initiatives to enhance teaching quality and received national recognition, including the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education's Innovation Award for her Course Workload Estimator tool. Her research and teaching interests intersect moral philosophy, political theory, and the history of religion, with recent focus on the philosophy of education and professorial authority in politically diverse classrooms. Despite administrative roles, she continued teaching various courses and in May 2018, will begin her new role as Executive Director of the Teaching and Learning Collaborative at Wake Forest University.

  KEYNOTE SUMMARY

AI for Humanity: Artificial Intelligence, Higher Education, and the Public Good
Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence raise a number of important issues for higher education. Over the past year, most conversations have focused on two. Some have worried about the implications of AI for student learning and academic integrity, while others have worried our institutions are not moving fast enough to develop and integrate AI literacy into our courses and curriculum. At this year’s Teaching Effectiveness Symposium, Dr. Betsy Barre invites participants to step back from these immediate concerns to reflect on the relationship between artificial intelligence and the humanistic mission of higher education. What will our students need to learn to advance the public good in a world transformed by AI? How can we prepare them to address the increasingly complex moral dilemmas before us with both wisdom and humility? And what of our roles as educators? Can AI enhance our practices without compromising the relational, human core of our work?

TENTATIVE EVENT SCHEDULE

Elizabeth Wheaton-Páramo (SMU Econ) and Mateo Langston Smith (SMU OIT), Tashima Thomas (SMU Meadows - Art History), Brett Story (SMU Lyle - CEE), and Daniel Tague (Meadows – Music Therapy)