Barnard Bold Conference 2025

CEP is thrilled to announce our Bold 2025 Conference lineup! Bold is not just any pedagogy conference; it’s a rare space for the whole Barnard community–students, faculty, and staff–to come together to consider the urgent questions impacting our teaching and learning culture. This year, we went back to our roots to emphasize student-designed sessions–like our Centering Disabled Voices panel discussion and our Prioritizing Student Learning, Centering Community Needs community conversation, both of which were pitched and designed by Barnard students and members of the CEP Student Advisory Committee. We are focusing on urgent topics identified by our community, such as our Cultures of Academic Freedom community forum and Living, Teaching, Learning Through Crises: Stories for Hope and Struggle. True to the CEP’s own goals this year, we are also highlighting faculty scholarship with Prof. Mara Green’s recently published, Making Sense: Language, Ethics, and Understanding in Deaf Nepal and spotlighting our ongoing investment in building a culture of pedagogical partnership with our exciting keynote workshop with Prof. Alison Cook-Sather and featuring partnerships between Barnard faculty and CEP Learning, Engagement, and Assessment Fellows (LEAFs).

Register for any and all Bold 2025 sessions here

Day 1 Session Information

Keynote: Co-creating Learning, Engagement, and Assessment through a Range of Pedagogical Partnership Approaches

12 - 1:30 PM on Thursday, April 3 in Sulzberger Parlor, Barnard Hall

In this interactive keynote workshop, Prof. Alison Cook-Sather will share arguments from the literature on pedagogical partnership, define pedagogical partnership, outline examples of curriculum- and pedagogy-focused partnership at multiple levels, and summarize the most common outcomes of pedagogical partnership work for faculty and students. The keynote will also integrate examples of Barnard faculty and student partners (LEAFs) sharing their work, and it will include plenty of time for reflection and dialogue, facilitated by Dr. Cook-Sather, about pedagogical partnership work.

Cultures of Academic Freedom

1:45 - 3 PM on Thursday April 3 in Sulzberger Parlor, Barnard Hall

Debates over academic freedom (what it means, who has it, what intellectual activities it covers, what threatens it, how to protect it) feature prominently in contemporary discussions about the present and future of higher education. This community forum, which invites faculty, staff, and students into conversation with each other and will be facilitated by Alex Pittman, presents an opportunity to engage this topic anew by inquiring into the underlying conditions that make a culture of academic freedom possible and desirable. Participants in this forum will be asked to read a 4-page essay (available upon RSVP) in advance.

Making Sense with Mara Green (a reading and Q&A)

3:30 - 4:30 PM on Thursday, April 3 in Sulzberger Parlor, Barnard Hall

In this session, Professor Mara Green (Barnard, Anthropology) will read from and discuss her recently published book, Making Sense: Language, Ethics, and Understanding in Deaf Nepal. This book examines the labor of sense-making that deaf Nepalis engage in through their uses of natural sign, a mode of communication that utilizes both conventional and improvisatory signs. Anyone interested in disability studies, language and interaction, and the relational dimensions of teaching and learning is encouraged to attend. A Q&A, facilitated by Alex Pittman, will follow the reading.

Day 2 Session Information

Centering Disabled Voices: Students and Faculty in Conversation

10 - 11 AM on Friday, April 4 in Milstein LL001

Academic accommodations and intellectual rigor are sometimes pitted against one another, but they are not inherently at odds. There are effective examples right here on our campus of students and faculty reimagining the relationship between accessibility and academic expectations. This panel discussion will center voices of disabled students in conversation with Barnard instructors from a range of disciplines who have demonstrated a skill for collaborating with students on academic accommodations. Participants will leave with a better understanding of students’ experiences and practical strategies for navigating academic accommodations. They will also be invited to think with the panelists about how we can create a new culture of academic accessibility. Co-organized by Alexa Easter, Emily Hui, Isabel Mavrides-Calderon, Melissa Wright, and Wen Zhang.

Living, Teaching, Learning through Crises: Stories for Struggle and Hope

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM on Friday, April 4 in Milstein LL001

We are, all of us, increasingly called on to live, teach, and learn through unsettled and unsettling times. This session aims to take a step back and situate the current moment in a longer history of crises so that we can learn from members of our community who have lived through and indeed learned from experiences of exclusion, injustice, and conflict. After hearing stories from Barnard faculty and staff, participants will be encouraged to share their own stories in small groups and discuss how we can support one another as we teach, learn and live through crises.

Panelists: To Be Announced

Prioritizing Student Learning, Centering Community Needs: A Conversation with Students, Faculty, and Staff

12:30 - 1:30 PM on Friday, April 4 in Milstein LL001

How do we focus on learning right now? How does high-achievement culture shape our learning environments, even in moments of upheaval? In this interactive session, Barnard faculty and students will share practical strategies for balancing the needs of the classroom community with a commitment to student learning. Through whole-group discussion, we’ll examine teaching practices that Barnard students say best support a culture of learning and humanize our educational spaces. Co-facilitated by Alexa Easter, Melissa Wright and members of the CEP Student Advisory Committee, including Juliet Burguieres, Aissata Diallo and Carolyn Wu.

Lunch-Time Tabling

1:30 - 2 PM on Friday, April 4 in Milstein LL001

[Description Forthcoming]