Call for Proposals

We are no longer accepting proposals.

For this year’s theme, Teaching Between the Heart and Hustle, we invite you to consider what roles emotions play in teaching and learning. 

We invite proposals from across UVA as well as from other institutions for two session types: interactive sessions and short presentations. Proposals should highlight concrete, equity-oriented innovations for creating learning environments for all students. Educational innovation need not be disruptive to make a difference—small, sustained changes matter, and we encourage session presenters to model different approaches to teaching. This year we especially invite proposals that speak to an instructor’s experience, such as considerations of workload and cultivating positive, sustainable relationships with students and colleagues.

You might consider the following as you develop your proposal:

• How does your course create an emotional arc to support student motivation?
• What roles do an instructor’s emotions play in the classroom and how do they affect student and instructor experiences?
• Where in your teaching do you intentionally acknowledge or utilize the integration of the affective and cognitive aspects of learning? 
• How do students learn the role of emotions in their educational and intellectual pursuits?
• When and why do you choose to focus on emotions in the classroom, and when do you not?
• Which aspects of your course design – assignments, grading scheme, in-class activities, etc. – are aimed at or influenced by student emotions? 
• How do you and your course cultivate an atmosphere, feeling, energy, or vibe? Does it have an effect on students? How do you know?
• How are any of the above questions shaped by enrollment, disciplinary norms, accessibility, and other contexts?

Presenters should consider the ways in which their presentations will address inclusion and accessibility; for example, awareness and acknowledgement of social and historical context, language and design choices that acknowledge (and work to address) power and difference, limiting the amount of text on slides, inclusive color palettes for figures, large text on visuals, and alt text in digital resources. You will be asked for a general description of your inclusive approaches in your proposal submission, and reviewers will provide additional suggestions as warranted.

Proposals will be peer reviewed on criteria including: alignment between session objectives and session design, relevance to audience and/or conference, clear takeaways or strategies for audience, and description of appropriate activities for interactive sessions.

Consider also how your materials can be shared with a wider audience; accepted presenters will be asked to share materials on the University’s open repository, Libra. We consistently get feedback from participants that they would like access to presenter materials after the event is over. Libra allows you to share your work with the UVA community and beyond and have a reliable, open way of connecting it to your electronic records. Materials are easily cited and have a DOI and associated metrics. We will share more information about depositing your materials on Libra with presenters before and after the Summit.