We warmly invite the campus community to the third annual Teaching & Learning Conference.
This event aims to foster a community of colleagues engaged in effective teaching and learning on our campus and present model cases of educators experimenting with a diverse range of teaching and learning strategies in UC Berkeley classrooms.
For this year’s theme, we hope to explore the relationship between student voice and liberation. The theme - “Student Voice, Liberation, and the Places We Teach” - is grounded in the work of Paulo Freire and his awareness of education as a means for learners to develop a critical consciousness of oppression and, in the process, discover their own agency for change. What does it mean for UC Berkeley to be a site for liberation?
There is undeniable tension between the pursuit of liberation and higher education as a system of learning. For example, Dr. Gina Garcia’s Organizing Framework for Decolonizing HSIs(link is external)holds important implications for ways in which institutions can fail to recruit, retain, and value minoritized students and their racial and cultural identities and histories. Our Teaching and Learning Conference is an opportunity to confront this reality from the level of classrooms, pedagogy, and our interactions with our students.
We look to you, the members of our campus community, to tell your story as it relates to empowering students toward their own liberation and, perhaps, discovering liberation for yourself in the process. Garcia’s work reminds us that liberation is a community responsibility: students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, and community partners “must believe in the mission and work toward the purpose” (138(link is external)).
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Gina Ann Garcia
Dr. Gina Ann Garcia is a professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. Her research centers on issues of equity and justice in higher education with an emphasis on understanding how Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) embrace and enact an organizational identity for serving minoritized populations. She explores the experiences of administrators, faculty, and staff at HSIs and the outcomes of students attending these institutions. As an equity-minded scholar, she tends to the ways that race and racism have shaped institutions of higher education.
Dr. Garcia is the author of Becoming Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Opportunities for Colleges & Universities and Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice. She is also the editor of the book Hispanic-Serving Institutions in Practice: Defining “Servingness” at HSIs and created and co-authored the workbook Transforming HSIs for Equity and Justice: A Practitioner’s Workbook.
She has delivered over 300 public lectures and workshops across the country and consults directly with HSIs to work towards organizational transformation. She is also the host of the popular podcast ¿Qué pasa, HSIs?
Dr. Garcia graduated from California State University, Northridge with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, the University of Maryland, College Park with a master’s degree in college student personnel, and the University of California, Los Angeles with a Ph.D. in higher education and organizational change. She is a proud alumna of a HSI and was a Title V Coordinator at CalState University, Fullerton which drives and motivates her research and praxis.
Registration is Now Open
Registration is open to all members of the UC Berkeley teaching and learning community, including, but not limited to, Senate and non-Senate faculty, instructional staff, Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), and Undergraduate Student Instructors (UGSIs).
Participation in this event is free of charge, but registration is required. We kindly request that you only register for the event if you can attend, as the capacity of the venue is limited.
Questions? Please contact the Center for Teaching and Learning
Email teaching@berkeley.edu(link sends e-mail) with any questions, concerns, or additional considerations.