Proposal Guidelines

Important Dates and Deadlines

Date

Action

Monday, January 27, 2025

Proposal submission window opens

Friday, March 14, 2025

Proposals must be received by 11:59 PM PT on this date to be reviewed

Friday, April 4, 2024

Decisions on selected proposals for the 2025 conference will be announced

Friday, April 18, 2025

Deadline to register to attend the conference

Friday, May 9, 2025 

Attend the 3rd Annual Teaching and Learning Conference at International House

Submit a Proposal

Deadline: March 14, 2025

Call for Proposals

CTL is accepting presentation proposals from all members of the UC Berkeley teaching and learning community, including, but not limited to, tenured and tenure track faculty, lecturers, instructional staff, and Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), Undergraduate Student Instructors (UGSIs), and decal instructors. If you interact with instructors or students in any capacity, we would love to hear your experience and lessons learned on supporting teaching and learning.

For this event, our theme is “Student Voice, Liberation, and the Places We Teach.” Some examples of questions that proposals might address include:

  • What does a moment of liberation look like and how do you cultivate it?

  • How do students’ hopes for themselves and their communities inform your teaching?

  • How do you partner with students to interrogate harmful moments in teaching and learning?

  • When is liberation in tension with college teaching?

  • What risks are involved when educators take students’ well being seriously?

  • How do you sustain care and wellness for yourself?

  • How do you engage with advocacy and liberation outside of the classroom?

While traditional academic conferences often see competitive proposals in terms of their analytic rigor, our conference values the ways scholarly personal narratives can also be rigorous. We are informed by higher education thinkers who see accounts of reflective teaching as liberating, and we encourage attendees to include such reflection in their proposals.

Presentation Formats

Proposals will be accepted for the following presentation formats:

  • Teaching & Learning Talks. Presenters who select this format will be expected to offer 30-minute conventional oral presentations to a group of attendees. Presenters will be expected to describe a teaching strategy and articulate its impact on student learning or learning experiences. Presenters are encouraged to design sessions that are interactive and hold the last 10-minutes of their time for questions from the audience.

  • Teaching Demonstrations. Presenters who select this format will have the opportunity to enact or practice an innovative teaching strategy three times (in successive 15-minute rounds) with small groups of attendees. Presenters should be prepared to share an example of a teaching strategy, which may include a demonstration, handout, or resource. The goal of these teaching demonstrations is two-fold: for attendees to add to their repertoires of innovative teaching practices, and for presenters to receive reflective feedback on what they have shared.

Submitting a Proposal

Selection Criteria

Presentation proposals will be evaluated based on the following required criteria:

  • Thematic Alignment. Does the proposal respond to one or more of the guided questions posed with the conference theme?

  • Impact. How will the presentation plan to address or describe the impact of one or more teaching strategies on student learning or experiences?

  • Relevance. Does the presentation apply to a diverse range of disciplines, class formats, and student needs or interests?

  • Equity and Inclusion. How does the presentation serve and support instructors and/or students from excluded and underrepresented communities?

Proposal Eligibility and Process

All UC Berkeley community members are eligible to submit a proposal to present. 

Proposals consist of a title, author list, and abstract and presentation abstract describing the focus of the presentation (100 words or less). Proposals will also include a presentation description that identifies how components of the presentation meet each of the four evaluation criteria (300 words or less).

If you have questions regarding this conference or ideas for your proposal, please consult with the Center for Teaching & Learning (teaching@berkeley.edu).