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 business and management at Vanguard University of Southern California. Bonni is the creator and host of Teaching in Higher Ed, a weekly podcast exploring the art and science of teaching. Since its launch in 2014, the show has surpassed five million downloads, received a MERLOT Classics Award, and has been featured in Inside 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.
Closing Keynote Speaker: Nicole Pitterson
Dr. Nicole Pitterson is an Associate Professor and Assistant Department Head for Undergraduate Programs in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, she worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University. Dr. Pitterson holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University. Her research interests include difficult concepts in engineering, increasing students’ conceptual understanding of complex concepts, curriculum design and promoting collaboration through using active learning strategies as well as exploring students’ disciplinary identities through engagement with knowledge.
If AI Can Do the Assignment, Why Are We Still Assigning It? Reimagining Assessment, Critical Thinking, and Authentic Learning in Higher Education
Generative AI has disrupted one of higher education’s longstanding assumptions: that the products students submit reliably demonstrate their learning. When AI can instantly generate essays, summaries, code, presentations, and even sophisticated analyses, faculty are being challenged to reconsider not only how we assess students, but what we truly value as evidence of learning.
This keynote invites faculty to move beyond conversations centered solely on academic integrity to engaging with the question: What types of learning experiences and assessments remain meaningful in an AI-rich world? Rather than treating generative AI as simply a threat to traditional assignments, the session reframes AI as a catalyst for redesign and presents an opportunity to shift assessment toward authentic inquiry, disciplinary thinking, problem-solving, reflection, and application in real-world contexts.
The keynote will explore how faculty can design assessments that emphasize process over product, cultivate critical thinking beyond information retrieval, and create opportunities for students to demonstrate judgment, creativity, ethical reasoning, and cognitive engagement. The talk will encourage faculty to consider how AI can function as a productive thought partner in the design of learning experiences while reinforcing their essential role as mentors, facilitators, and architects of meaningful learning.
Agenda
UDL and Academic Accommodations: How They Work Together
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and academic accommodations are sometimes seen as separate approaches to accessibility, but they are most effective when they work together. This session introduces the fundamentals of UDL and examines how proactive course design can support accessibility while complementing the accommodation process. Participants will explore practical strategies for designing courses that reduce barriers for diverse learners while maintaining the flexibility needed to support individual student needs.
Facilitators: Pearl Xie, Director of Universal Design for Learning and Accessibility Services, TLOS and Ashley Bray, Director of Services for Students with Disabilities, Student Affairs
Big Classes, Strong Connections: Designing Large Courses Students Want to Show Up For
What does it take to make 500 students want to show up at 8 a.m. and stay engaged once they do? This session draws on real teaching experiences in large enrollment courses and student feedback to explore how small, intentional changes can transform the energy of a lecture hall. It highlights practical ways to make large classes feel more alive, connected, and worth the early wake-up.
Facilitator: Pitchayaporn “Peach” Tantihkarnchana, Collegiate Assistant Professor, Department of Economics
Experiential Learning: A Hands-on Approach to Course Design
This session focuses on how hands-on learning opportunities are intentionally integrated into course design. In LAR 3154, students engage with environmental topics related to stormwater through experiential activities that use the campus and surrounding community as a living laboratory. We will discuss how these field-based experiences are scaffolded within the course, including preparatory instruction, the structure and facilitation of the on-site experience, and strategies for guiding meaningful post-experience reflection.
Facilitator: Jenn Engelke, Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture
Why Can't Chat GPT Write my Essay?
In this micro-session, I will discuss ways that I have incorporated Chat GPT usage ethically in my class. With real life classroom scenarios, I'll also describe ways that students have tried to use AI to do their assignments and how I attempt to prepare assignments that discourage full AI preparation.
Facilitator: Katherine Hall, Advanced Instructor, Department of English
Get Them Thinking: Practical Strategies for Active Classrooms
Students don’t all learn in the same way or at the same pace, so how can we make class time more engaging and meaningful for more of them? In this session, we’ll look at a few ways to incorporate in-class problem solving that invite broader participation and encourage students to learn from each other. We’ll also reflect on how classroom structures can help students feel more comfortable taking intellectual risks and viewing mistakes as part of learning. The session will offer practical ideas you can adapt to your own teaching context.
Facilitator: Kelli Karcher, Director of Undergraduate Academics, Advanced Instructor, Department of Mathematics
Down with Friendly, Up with Nice."
Of the chaplain's polite yet distant relationships with his Army colleagues in Catch-22, Joseph Heller wrote, “Everyone was always very friendly toward him, and no one was ever very nice; everyone spoke to him, and no one ever said anything.” Sometimes we lament that our students treat us with similar perfunctory chilliness, but sometimes that's because we seem perfunctorily chilly! This talk addresses broadly applicable ways to decenter steer clear of a seemingly emotionally sterile style of classroom performance while still maintaining professional distance.
Facilitator: Andrew Hobin, Advanced Instructor, Department of English
Beyond Lectures: Using Case-Based Assignments to Deepen Conceptual Learning
This presentation explores practical methods for augmenting traditional instruction by pairing core concepts with carefully selected case-based assignments that challenge students to apply, analyze, and synthesize what they've learned. The session will examine how real-world and simulated cases can serve as cognitive anchors to create more engaging learning experiences. Attendees will leave with an actionable framework they can adapt across disciplines to align with specific learning objective and varying levels of student readiness.
Facilitator: Joseph Roark, Assistant Professor of Practice, Department of Management
Efficient Strategies for Engaging Students in Large Classes
It can be difficult to engage students in large classrooms for a variety of reasons. Students may expect to be able to be a passive observer, many engagement options cost money, and even more simply require a lot of time and effort. In this session, we will explore strategies for engaging students that are no-cost and require minimal preparation, without the need to learn new software.
Facilitator: J.P. Gannon, Collegiate Associate Professor, Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation