CAST Fall 2026

Come chat with fun colleagues and Serie Center staff (bring your lunch to the Serie Center)!!!

A number of Macalester faculty and staff participated in a Discussion Project Workshop held on campus in May 2026. A few of those participants (Julia Chadaga, I-Chun Catherine Chang, Cari Gillen-O’Neel, Sonia Mehta and Layla Zbinden) will share ready-to-implement tools and strategies for facilitating inclusive classroom discussions.

Interested in resources specifically designed to improve your teaching and learning practice? Join us for this upcoming CAST session to learn about To Improve the Academy (TIA), an educational development journal curated by scholars, practitioners, and thinkers to provide access to cutting-edge research on teaching and learning. As an assistant editor for TIA, Ebony Aya will provide an overview of the journal and highlight ways to get involved which include becoming an assistant editor, submitting your research on teaching and learning, and learning more about what additional resources the journal has to offer.

Other academic cultures teach writing differently from the way we do – as David learned, the hard way, during his five years teaching at the University of Bonn. He’ll share how this experience changed the way he teaches writing (no more thesis statements!) and how it gave him a new perspective on strengths – and weaknesses – of humanities scholarship in the US.

What does AI look like at Macalester? Come learn about classroom recommendations for navigating AI, campus supported AI resources, recent surveys gauging Macalester faculty and student usage and attitudes about AI, and an overview of June’s Faculty Learning Community (FLC) on Teaching in the Age of AI. 

Today many associate head-coverings with women, piety, beauty, and modesty, among other things. What meanings did veiling hold 2000 years ago in the ancient Mediterranean? Come explore images of veiled men, women, and objects in antiquity, and think about the variety of meanings that veiling held for people in the past.

Macalester is piloting Gradescope, an assessment tool integrated with Moodle. Gradescope can streamline the grading process and enhance quality, flexibility, and efficiency. Hear why and how longtime users integrate it into their workflows.

In July 2026, Brianna Heggeseth joined a group of 26 statistics, data science, and computer science educators at 10 liberal arts colleges and one R1 university to discuss the opportunities and challenges facing undergraduate higher education brought on by the rapid adoption of Generative AI (GenAI) tools. They were not of one mind: their approaches to GenAI in the classroom ran the gamut from “let’s ban it” to “let’s embrace it.” And yet, they arrived at a largely shared conception of how GenAI is currently affecting our students, our classes, and our profession, supported by peer-reviewed research and rooted in longstanding theories of learning. Come learn more about our ongoing research collaboration and conclusions.

Academic reading is rarely explicitly taught to students. Having successfully internalized academic reading moves, we often forget that students benefit from additional scaffolding into this social practice. For multilingual students, some strategies can be more helpful than others to fully tap into their linguistic repertoire. Sonia Mehta and Em Buchanan share strategies and suggestions to support you with your students. Through a fun and engaging activity, you will put your reading strategies into action, collectively pool your academic reading resources, and leave knowing what students will ideally know before they tackle the assigned readings in your course.

Come eat lunch with colleagues and work on midterm grades & end of course survey questions!!!

ATLAS.ti is software originally developed to facilitate qualitative analysis (e.g., analyzing interview data), but its tools can also be surprisingly useful for conducting literature reviews. This summer, Nancy Bostrom and Cari Gillen-O’Neel worked with a team of students to use ATLAS.ti to organize and synthesize a literature review. We found it especially helpful for keeping track of sources and notes, identifying connections across studies, and developing emerging themes in the literature. Because Macalester has a site license for ATLAS.ti, the software is available to faculty and students at no cost. Join us for a demonstration of how we used ATLAS.ti and a conversation about how it might support your own—or your students’—literature reviews.

Want to expand your support for students with disabilities, but not sure where to start? Working to find a balance between classroom priorities and the implementation of students’ accommodations? Join us for this accessibility-themed Dilemma Monday, where we’ll work together to find solutions to challenges, concerns, and questions about improving access while maintaining rich learning environments for all students.

The Arctic is frequently viewed within two simultaneous and contrasting spectacles: the spectacle of crisis (public and scholarly narratives that highlight dramatic climate change impacts on Arctic ecosystems and communities) and the spectacle of possibility (political visions and scientific models that envision new resource possibilities under climate warming). In this session, Professor Price unpacks the imaginary of Arctic agriculture, firmly in tension between the spectacles of crisis and possibility, and considers the implications for Indigenous lands and local livelihoods.

Come to this session to hear about how faculty in departments around Macalester are integrating Sustainability into their teaching, research, and service. This session will involve a short panel presentation followed by a discussion about opportunities to integrate sustainability initiatives on and off campus into your work.

In this session, Professor Chakrabarti will draw on his long-term research on wild lions across diverse ecosystems and share recent sabbatical work establishing an NSF-funded research project in the semi-arid landscape of Tsavo, Kenya. From GPS-collaring 15 lions and following their daily lives to discovering new mothers and tiny cubs, deploying a vast camera-trap network across 2500 sq.km, outwitting rogue elephants, building a field research base, and training an inspiring team of researchers, he will take you behind the scenes of what it takes to study—and understand—lions beyond the savanna.

Macalester’s new Foundations Course is designed to facilitate students’ academic transition to college, introduce them to the liberal arts framework, and develop foundational research and writing skills. In this session, faculty teaching Foundations pilot courses this fall, a staff member who helped shape the Foundations framework, and a member of the Curriculum Implementation Committe will share how they are bringing the new curriculum to life. Panelists will discuss the development of the model, course designs, teaching approaches, early insights, and the opportunities and challenges of implementing something new. Participants will also have time to ask questions and consider what these early experiences might mean for the Foundations Core moving forward.

Professor Duchess Harris will discuss her bold and timely anthology that interrogates the British monarchy through the lens of race, gender, and postcolonial critique. Her work uses an interdisciplinary approach to reveal how one woman’s experience within the royal family brings into focus broader social and historical processes of racial identity-making and colonial power. This talk engages those seeking to understand the cultural and political significance of Meghan Markle’s story, and what it tells us about the world we live in.

Come to the Serie Center to eat lunch and talk about challenges in your professional life!

This session will highlight the experiences of 1-2 faculty who taught CEL courses this fall term. There will be an overview of the CEL components of the class, a summary on reflection and evaluation of CEL, and the presentation of lessons learned by the faculty member. The session will conclude with brief table conversations responding to the presentation and discussing CEL going forward.

Join us for some time as a community to debrief from the semester and see colleagues!