2026 Program

• Natasha Heny, Associate Professor, Curriculum, Instruction & Special Education, School of Education and Human Development, UVA
• Fang Yi, Assistant Director, A&S Learning Design & Technology, UVA

As generative AI reshapes teaching and learning, many instructors are asking not only what students can do with AI, but how we can sustain trust in the learning process. This interactive session introduces the SKEPTICS framework as a tool for helping students reflect critically on how AI affects their thinking, decision-making, and growth. Participants will explore ways to design assignments that promote transparency, honest self-assessment, and meaningful engagement rather than concealment or overreliance. Through hands-on activities attendees will adapt the framework to their own courses and leave with practical strategies for building trust in student learning.

• Luke Rosenberger, Assistant Director of Digital Accessibility Initiatives, Center for Teaching Excellence, UVA
• Lauren Machen, Undergraduate Student, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Catherine Young, Undergraduate Student, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

Discussions around academic accommodations and accessibility have grown more frequent in recent years. Public institutions are increasing their efforts to meet accessibility standards, and pushing instructors to redouble their efforts. Often absent from these discussions are the voices of those most impacted: students who rely upon accessible content, assistive technology, or accommodations to support academic success. In this interactive session, students will share stories of barriers and successes, and discuss how trust with peers and instructors impacts their learning experience. Participants will leave the session with concrete ideas to build trust with their students around course accessibility and academic accommodations.

• Jim Seitz, Associate Professor, English, UVA
• Ali Khokhar, Undergraduate Student, Computer Science, School of Engineering & Applied Science, UVA
• Elizabeth Fox, Undergraduate Student, Music, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Kate Lomuntad, Undergraduate Student, Economics, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

This interactive session will help participants from various disciplines explore trustworthy methods that allow students to write full essays with their laptops in class. At a time when A.I. is eroding trust between teachers and students, leading many teachers to have students write by hand, the presenters for this session will discuss an approach to writing on laptops that reestablishes trust while creating an optimal classroom environment for composing free of distractions that commonly interrupt concentration. Participants will learn how to assign, assess, and respond to in-class writing in ways that enhance teacher-student relations and develop students' capacities as writers.

• Marian Coleman, Instructor, Public Safety & Justice, School of Continuing & Professional Studies, UVA

Trust between students and instructors is a foundational component of effective learning environments, influencing participation, engagement, and intellectual risk-taking. This presentation explores how servant leadership—a leadership model emphasizing service to followers, fairness, and personal development—can be applied to teaching in higher education. Drawing on findings from a 2024 study of leaders attending the FBI National Academy, which found strong relationships between servant leadership, follower trust, and perceptions of fairness, this session translates leadership research into practical classroom strategies. Participants will learn how servant leadership behaviors can foster psychological safety and trust in the classroom and will leave with concrete practices they can adopt to strengthen student engagement and learning.

• Alicia Frantz, Associate Professor, Chemistry, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

Students may be reluctant to see themselves or their peers as reliable sources of knowledge and will often only seek validation from the instructor. In large enrollment courses, working one-on-one with every student is simply not possible so creating an environment in which students trust their TAs is essential. To instill TAs with confidence in their roles as educators, a companion instructor guide was developed for class activities that includes in-depth explanations, suggested responses, and common student mistakes. The TAs also participate in regular instructional training and attend weekly meetings to discuss upcoming course activities and practice with the guide.

• Haeyoon Chung, Assistant Professor, Psychology, James Madison University
• Yanbin Lee, Assistant Professor, Psychology, James Madison University
• Yuxuan Zhao, Assistant Professor, Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Stout

Mentoring psychology undergraduates through practicum courses provides critical hands-on training that complements academic learning and prepares students to become future practitioners and scholars (Amponsah et al., 2014). This presentation shares a trust-centered design for credit-bearing psychology field experiences that cultivates trust across the student-instructor-community triad, fostering reciprocal learning and professional growth. We highlight course design strategies that supports students’ professional identity development and confidence. Attendees will gain a practical “trust protocol” including course and assignment examples that they can implement in their own field placement or internship courses.

• Anna Santucci, Associate Director, Center for Teaching Excellence, UVA
• Jim Carlisle, Youth & Social Innovation, School of Education and Human Development, UVA
• Brian Choe, Computer Science, School of Engineering & Applied Science, UVA
• Thierno Dansoko, Economics, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Sophie Quraishi, Biochemistry, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Rasmi Tangirala, Mathematics & Linguistics, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

CTE's Undergraduate Student Teaching Consultants invite you to this facilitated student-faculty lunch conversation. We will explore the role of trust and relationships in fostering healthy learning environments in which all students and teachers can grow together and thrive.

• Dorothe Bach, Associate Director & Professor, Center for Teaching Excellence, UVA
• Jason Bennett, Learning Experience and Environment Designer, A&S Learning Design & Technology, UVA
• Devin Donovan, Associate Professor, English, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Jennifer Lawrence, Assistant Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, School of Architecture, UVA
• Sasson Rafailov, Lecturer, School of Architecture, UVA
• Devin Zuckerman, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

This session invites participants to consider emergent pedagogical practices designed to challenge the belief that humans are separate from nature, from each other, and from the consequences of their actions. Drawing on our work in a cross-disciplinary community of practice, we share experiential learning activities that cultivate embodied awareness of relationality, belonging, and ecological entanglement. We highlight how artistic self-expression, place-based inquiry, and playful contemplation can activate instructor and students’ sense of wonder and facilitate trust that our embodied experiences are valid sites of meaning-making. Participants will leave with adaptable learning activities and inspiration for their own teaching.

• Jen Pease, Associate Professor of Education, Curriculum, Instruction & Special Education, School of Education and Human Development, UVA

How much time have you spent grading student work this semester, and how much time will you spend in the coming days? What if time spent grading student work was instead devoted to strengthening trust with and among students, cultivating class cultures centered on deep engagement with learning, and guiding students to exemplary performance? What joyful and invigorating spaces our classes would be! We will explore approaches for using feedback as a lever for fostering relational trust with students and identify small changes that can lead to more efficient and powerful learning.

• Andrew Kennedy, Assistant Director of STEM Education Initiatives, Center for Teaching Excellence, UVA
• Heidi Nobles, Associate Professor, English, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Rishi Chandra, Global Studies, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Andrew Liu, Computer Science, School of Engineering & Applied Science, UVA
• Salonee Verma, Computer Science, School of Engineering & Applied Science, UVA
• Owen Watzlavick, Economics, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

Generative AI is rapidly reshaping how students approach coursework, raising questions about transparency, trust, and expectations in the classroom. This interactive session explores how instructors can address these challenges by engaging students as partners and co-creators in shaping course policies and norms around AI use. Created and facilitated collaboratively by faculty and undergraduates, this session brings student perspectives directly into faculty conversations about teaching with AI. Participants will analyze examples of AI policy language, discuss how students interpret these policies, and draft transparent course statements aligned with their pedagogical goals. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for communicating clearly about AI while fostering a culture of trust and shared responsibility for learning.

• Matthew Street, Senior Lecturer, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

Students increasingly enter classrooms deeply connected to the digital world but often disconnected from one another. Many arrive early and immediately retreat into their phones, limiting opportunities for the informal interactions that help build comfort and community. This presentation explores how instructors can help students become comfortable being uncomfortable through small teaching and interpersonal practices that foster community and normalize participation. Drawing on an ongoing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning study in an accelerated beginning Spanish course, the project investigates how everyday pedagogical and interpersonal choices influence students' sense of belonging, foster classroom community, and encourage greater participation. Although the research is situated in a language classroom, the practices discussed are readily adaptable across disciplines.

• Charlie Gleek, Lecturer, The Engagements, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

Trust functions as the invisible condition of genuine learning, and the most important thing a course can design. In my first-year Engagements seminar, students build physical scrapbooks: bound, handmade books curating curricular, co-curricular, and personal ephemera from their first weeks on Grounds. The assignment demands visible, public vulnerability: glue bleeds through, pages tear, books buckle. That vulnerability only becomes possible inside a trust structure built deliberately from Day 1: ungraded practice, co-authored norms, collaborative evaluation, and one-on-one faculty conversations. Drawing on cognitive science and craft theory, this session demonstrates how trust transforms a frictional and uncertain environment into a community of makers and invites participants to consider what resistant tasks might look like in their own courses.

• Caroline Crockett, Electrical & Computer Engineering, School of Engineering & Applied Science, UVA
• George Prpich, Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering & Applied Science, UVA

Troubleshooting is often viewed as a professional competency, i.e., a skill that engineers acquire through years of experience. We argue that troubleshooting is a learned skill and that instructors can teach troubleshooting fundamentals using experiential tools that scaffold the learning experience. In this presentation, you will take the role of a student to troubleshoot a variety of faulty systems. We will then discuss findings from the literature relating troubleshooting to non-cognitive constructs closely related to trust such as self-efficacy and context.

• Devin Donovan, Associate Professor, English, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Rory Sullivan, Assistant Professor, English, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Rhiannon Goad, Assistant Professor, English, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Ethan King, Assistant Professor, English, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Kate Natishan, Assistant Professor, English, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

In the fall of 2025, UVA's Writing & Rhetoric Program piloted a voluntary, participatory model of peer-to peer observation. We wanted to see what a model free from the pressure of the renewal and promotion process could do for our teaching and our sense of belonging within the program and at the University. The results were both heartening and enlightening. In this session, faculty participants will share about why they signed up, what it was like to participants as a student in a colleague's class, and how the experience enhanced their connection to their students, their colleagues, and their craft.

• Richard Ridge, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, UVA

The purpose is to share my experiences conducting regular and consistent weekly 10 class check-ins with students that include stress injury self-assessment, emotional state reflections, and identification of prevention and management strategies. Initially designed to promote resilience and mental health wellness, the check-ins have fostered a safe, collaborative, and effective learning environment where students experience benevolence, faculty consistency & dependability, and openness to communication regarding stress and wellness.

• Lilian Feitosa, Associate Professor of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA
• Shilpa Davé, Advising Dean & Associate Professor, Media Studies, College of Arts & Sciences, UVA

This presentation details the process of crafting the 2025-2026 Race Place and Equity Engagements cohort. The cohort courses introduce students to the histories and legacies that shaped Charlottesville and central Virginia while also teaching the fundamentals of place-based and community-based learning. The yearlong cohort format fosters a sense of community while facilitating critical thinking and building trust in each other and the professors. The courses invite participants to reflect upon their own histories, and shared experiences at UVA, learning from each other, while fostering connection to communities in Charlottesville, the Commonwealth and beyond.

• Scott Barker, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering & Applied Science, UVA

This interactive session will highlight effective teaching practices taking place across Grounds, drawing on case studies from UVA colleagues and real student feedback. Participants will explore a deck of research-informed teaching strategies cards, each describing an instructional move and offering tips for how you might use it in your own classes. You’ll leave with concrete ideas to change up your teaching.

• Special guest: Isis Artze-Vega, Summit keynote speaker and coauthor of The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching
• Facilitator: Jeremy Ortmann, Graduate Student, Biomedical Engineering, UVA

This is the third and final meeting of our Summit book group. All graduate students are welcome to join this discussion with our Summit keynote speaker.