Keynote Presentation

Creating classroom spaces in which we explore and celebrate our shared humanity means leading with kindness. In this presentation we'll explore three tenets of compassionate teaching: justice, believing students, and believing in students. We'll reflect together on what kindness (and its lack) has meant to us within academia, and how we can—piece by piece—assemble a kind approach to pedagogy that meets the needs of our students and ourselves in a time of great change.

Catherine (Cate) Denial, Ph.D.

Cate is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. A distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, Cate won the American Historical Associations’ 2018 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award. She serves on the board of Commonplace: A Journal of Early American Life and is a past member of the Educational Advisory Committee of the Digital Public Library of America. From 2001 to 2011, Denial served as the Lead Historian for Bringing History Home, a professional development program for K-12 educators funded by $3M from the U.S. Department of Education. Cate’s new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness (due out later this year), argues that higher education needs to get aggressively and determinedly kind. A Pedagogy of Kindness is about attending to justice, believing people, and believing in people. It’s a transformational discipline.

As creator and director of the Bright Institute at Knox College, Cate oversees a program that supports 13 faculty from liberal arts schools across the U.S. in their teaching and research for three years, while providing them with $10,500 in research funds and convening an annual summer seminar. She is the PI on a $150,000 grant awarded to Knox College by the Mellon Foundation in July 2022, bringing together 36 participants from across higher education in the U.S. to explore “Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care in the Academy After COVID-19.” Cate is also a pedagogical consultant who works with individuals, departments, and institutions in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and Australia.