Events
Contact
Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and TeachingDewitt Wallace Library, Suite 338 651-696-6605
Conversations about Scholarship & Teaching
All sessions will be held from noon-1 p.m. in the Harmon Room in the DeWitt Wallace Library unless otherwise noted. A salad and sandwich lunch will be provided. All faculty and staff are welcome!
Fall 2025
Friday, September 12
Jim Doyle (Physics & Astronomy)
Winner of the 2025 Jack & Marty Rossmann Excellence in Teaching Award
Monday, September 15
Beth Severy-Hoven (Classical Mediterranean & Middle East), Lesley Lavery (Political Science), Jeremy Meckler (Media & Cultural Studies),and Anika Bratt (Environmental Studies)
The Discussion Project: Simple Tools for Facilitating Inclusive Classroom Discussions
A number of Macalester faculty and staff participated in a Discussion Project Workshop held on campus in May 2025. A few of those participants (Anika Bratt, Lesley Lavery, Jeremy Meckler, and Beth Severy-Hoven) will share ready-to-implement tools and strategies for facilitating inclusive classroom discussions.
Friday, September 19
Lesley Lavery (Political Science) (with Sara Dahill-Brown and Stefanie Chambers)
Closing Time? Navigating Community & Conflict Amid Austerity
This study examines how communities across the United States (from Boston to San Antonio and Seattle) navigate school closures amid demographic and pandemic induced declining enrollment and resource scarcity. Through stakeholder interviews and analysis of public documents and media across multiple public school markets, we investigate school closure as a dynamic process with consequences unfolding long after building lockouts. Our findings will inform future consolidation efforts and school finance debates.
Monday, September 22
Shanti Freitas (Center for Study Away); Megan Butler (Sustainability); Derek Johnson (Community Engagement Center); Katie Kelly (Academic Programs and Advising); Jean-Marie Maddux (Psychology and Neuroscience); Jon Vaughan-Fier (Hamre Center for Health & Wellness); and Hui Wilcox (Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship)
Unlearning with Ecuadorian Partners
The Center for Study Away (CSA) and Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship (KAIGC) have a partnership with Pachaysana, an organization and collective of Ecuadorian and international educators, nature restorers, teaching artists, and community organizers. During summer 2025, a cohort of six Macalester faculty and staff spent 2 weeks in Ecuador, on a retreat facilitated by Pachaysana meant to create spaces where all participants unlearn and grow together, develop the knowledge and skills necessary to transform our work, reimagine new stories, and integrate diverse ways of knowing and being into our institutions, teaching, and activism. At this CAST presentation, this cohort will present on their learning and unlearning, and discuss how we might reimagine our work at Macalester.
Friday, September 26
Dan Trudeau (Geography)
Advancing Belonging and Inclusion through Public Programming in City Parks
This session examines how infrastructure design and programming interventions in city parks can foster social interaction and promote inclusion in diverse communities. We will explore this topic through a case study of the Signs of Belonging project, a pathbreaking public art project in Ramsey County, Minnesota, designed to expand the capacity of the park system to welcome diverse communities and deepen people’s sense of belonging in parks. We’ll unpack research on people’s experiences with the public art to discuss how coordinated events, thoughtful signage, and carefully designed infrastructure can enhance the park experience for everybody. The session will consider how insights from parks could apply to other efforts to create spaces that serve as vibrant community hubs in an increasingly diverse society.
Monday, September 29
Julia Chadaga (Russian Studies)
Sharing Stories and Building Skills: Reflections on Teaching a Community-Engaged Course
In the spring of 2024, students in a project-based course funded by Project Pericles titled “Once We Arrived: Stories of Immigrants’ First Jobs” interviewed Twin Cities immigrants from various parts of the world, then created a website featuring the interviewees’ stories of work, struggle, and perseverance. This workshop will provide an overview of the course goals, process, and outcomes, then invite attendees to share their thoughts and questions about this course and, more broadly, the challenges and the potential of community-engaged learning at Mac.
Friday, October 3 (will be held in the Serie Center, Library 338)
Lisa Mueller (Political Science)
Do Protests Work? What Activism Can (and Can’t) Achieve
Why do some protest movements spark lasting change while others fizzle out or even backfire? Lisa explores protest outcomes while drawing on insights from The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists, recipient of the 2025 Minnesota Book award for best non-fiction book. In this session, she also shares new findings on how protest waves shape crime trends around the world and provides advice for writing for a lay audience. Combining statistical analysis, experiments, and ethnographic fieldwork, Lisa offers an evidence-based look at the power and limits of collective action.
Monday, October 6
Dilemma Monday
Bring your pedagogical dilemmas and benefit from the collective wisdom of our colleagues
Friday, October 10 (will be held in the Serie Center, Library 338)
Applying for Scholarly Funding at Mac: Wallace Scholarly Activities and Collaborative Summer Research with students; a presentation and Q&A with Dennis Cao and David Moore
Macalester faculty may apply for varied types of funding each year from the College. Two notable programs are Wallace Scholarly Activities (WSA, with early November and February deadlines) and Collaborative Summer Research (CSR, early February deadline, requiring student collaborators). Dennis Cao and David Moore have substantial experience reviewing and rating these applications. Over lunch, we’ll briefly outline the two programs, describe common strengths and fixable application weaknesses, and take questions. In advance of the session, please review the current program descriptions for the WSA and CSR programs.
Friday, October 17 (Fall Break)
Friday, October 24 (no CAST: International Roundtable in session)
Monday, October 27
Louisa Bradtmiller (Environmental Studies and Academic Programs & Advising)
“Introducing . . . the Advising Dashboard!”
We have several digital tools available to us as academic advisors. Some are easier to use than others, and none centralize all the information we might want about a student in one place. Over the past year, Louisa Bradtmiller (Associate Dean of Advising) has worked with Lloyd Lentz and Kathryn Dijkstra to build a new online tool for advising at Macalester. In this session, we’ll demonstrate some of its features, answer questions, and have a conversation about what additional capabilities might be possible or desirable in the future. Bring a laptop/tablet/phone if you want to take it for a test drive during our session!
Friday, October 31 (Halloween Edition!)
Sarah Boyer (Biology)
Discovering, Describing, and Understanding Biogeographic Patterns in the Southern Hemisphere
How many species are there? How are they distributed in space? And, how has Earth history shaped the biogeographic patterns we see around us today? These questions drive the work that my students and I carry out in my lab at Macalester and in the field. Today’s talk will focus on research we’ve done in Australia and New Zealand, with support from the US National Science Foundation. We study arachnids, but don’t be alarmed! We work on daddy long-legs that – contrary to popular myth – are not venomous at all.
Monday, November 3 (will be held in the Serie Center, Library 338)
Dilemma Monday
Bring your pedagogical dilemmas and benefit from the collective wisdom of our colleagues
Friday, November 7
Michelle Tong (Biology and Neuroscience)
Neural Mechanisms for Odor-Guided Foraging
Many animals rely on their sense of smell to find nutritious food, but this seemingly routine task is surprisingly complex. To succeed, they must detect odors, pinpoint where they come from, recall what food they signal, and decide which ones are worth pursuing. Even more surprising, neurons in the olfactory system don’t just respond to smells—they play a role in every step of optimal foraging. A main focus of my lab is studying how neural circuits and molecules in the olfactory system work together to guide odor-based foraging decisions. In this session, I’ll share some of our recent findings as well as new projects I’ll be pursuing during my pretenure leave at the Allen Institute in Seattle, WA.
Monday, November 10
Mozhdeh Khodarahmi (Library), Brigid McCreery (Library), Tamatha Perlman (ITS)
AI-Related Resources
Join us for an overview of the AI-related resources available to faculty at Macalester. This session will highlight both the digital tools and the human expertise that can support you in thoughtfully engaging with artificial intelligence across your teaching, research, and academic work.
Friday, November 14
Ebony Aya (Serie Center)
Shaping the Future of Support for Faculty Scholarship
[description forthcoming]
Friday, November 21 (meet in Smail Gallery, Olin Rice)
Bret Jackson (MSCS), Kelly MacGregor (Geology), and Leah Witus (Chemistry)
Mini-Tour of Faculty Research Labs in OLRI
Ever wondered what goes on in all of those OLRI labs? Never seen the insides of any of the labs? Curious about the amazing scholarly work of your ORLI colleagues? Join us for a mini-tour of the labs of Bret Jackson (Computer Science), Kelly MacGregor (Geology) and Leah Witus (Chemistry). Not only will you be able to experience their labs up front and close but you’ll get the chance to learn more about the scholarship that takes place in those spaces.
Monday, December 1
Dilemma Monday
Bring your pedagogical dilemmas and benefit from the collective wisdom of our colleagues
Previous Conversations about Scholarship and Teaching
2024-2025 Conversations about Scholarship and Teaching
2023-2024 Conversations about Scholarship and Teaching
2022-2023 Conversation about Scholarship and Teaching