Welcome Back Symposium
Virtual Welcome Back Symposium 2026: Practical Strategies to Enhance Student Engagement and Learning
Join your Virginia Tech colleagues on Friday, August 21, 2026, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. for the Virtual Welcome Back Symposium. This entirely online symposium, hosted by CETL, offers attendees the opportunity to explore strategies, tools, and resources that Virginia Tech faculty find effective in supporting student learning. Faculty presenters represent diverse disciplinary backgrounds and a wide range of teaching experience. Sessions will highlight practical ideas and approaches that can be readily integrated across a variety of course contexts.
The week before the semester begins is a busy time so please join us for some, or all, of the event as your schedule allows! Registration will provide access to all presentation links.
Keynote Speaker: Bonni Stachowiak
Bonni Stachowiak is a teacher and learner at heart, always searching for better questions to spark curiosity and imagination. She serves as dean of teaching and learning and professor of businessand management at Vanguard University of Southern California. Bonni is the creator and host of Teaching in Higher Ed, a weekly podcast exploring the art andscience of teaching. Since its launch in 2014, the show has surpassed five million downloads, received a MERLOT Classics Award, and has been featured inInside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Higher Education, and EdSurge. Bonni holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership from Pepperdine University and earned her master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Chapman University. She speaks regularly at conferences and campuses on topics like curiosity, digital pedagogy, and ethical leadership. She often joins her husband, Dave Stachowiak, as a co-host on his Coaching for Leaders podcast. Bonni and Dave are raising two curious kids who keep the whole family’s love for learning alive.
Curious, Connected, and Creative: Practical Strategies for Sparking Student Engagement
In this 40-minute keynote, we will explore the small, evidence-based moves faculty can make at the start of the semester (and sustain throughout the class) to shift student engagement from the transactional to the transformative. Participants will leave with a handful of specific strategies they can try right away, to support their motivation for the start of the fall semester.
The session will include regular interactive pauses and activities, and I will weave in what I have been learning from my own teaching and conversations with faculty guests on Teaching in Higher Ed about how students today are navigating their relationship with coursework and learning, including the growing frustration (on both sides) around pre-class preparation.
Learning Outcomes
The talk will equip participants to:
- Articulate why curiosity, connection, and creativity are central to sustained student engagement and how these factors shape whether and how students come prepared.
- Identify specific points in their courses where small changes can heighten students' curiosity and connection.
- Apply at least two practical strategies for building engagement in creative ways this semester.
- Reflect on their own teaching practices through students' eyes, informed by the scholarship of teaching and learning and lived experiences.