2025

Join us for the 30th Annual FALCON Conference on Friday, September 26 (virtual) from 9:00 - 3:00 pm Eastern, where we’ll explore Teaching with Purpose: Supporting Learners in a Changing World. 

In today’s rapidly changing educational and cultural environment, faculty face increasing challenges as they strive to create learning spaces that are responsive, student-centered, and adaptative. Evolving institutional expectations and shifting social context and circumstances have added complexity to the teaching experience for both the teacher and student.

Schedule

Check out the tentative schedule of plenaries and concurrent sessions. Times are subject to change.

Schedule

Registration

FALCON 2025 is a free virtual conference open to part-time and non-tenure track faculty members from institutions of higher education around the world. Registration is required, space is limited. 

The virtual conference is being hosted on Canvas through Indiana University. You must self-enroll to the course. Before self-enrolling, if you do not have an IU account, you must create an IU Guest Account to access the virtual conference. There is no cost to create an account and it only takes a minute to complete the form. Once your guest account is completed, you must login to Canvas.IU.edu to turn on your access to Canvas.

Register and enroll

Purposeful Teaching in an Uncertain Age: Strategies for Making Meaning Together

Laura Cruz, Research Professor with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, Penn State

Many scholars and practitioners suggest that having a strong sense of purpose, i.e., a deeply meaningful reason for doing what we do, can be a powerful compass during times of uncertainty.   In this interactive (and hopefully inspirational) session, we will discuss how you find purpose in your teaching practice, how your students find purpose in their learning experiences, and, perhaps most importantly, how you and your students can create a sense of shared purpose together.   Drawing on psychological and philosophical models of futures-thinking, the session will provide practical insights into how we teach today and the possibilities for how we might teach (and learn) tomorrow.

Laura Cruz (Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley) is a Research Professor with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State. She is also a Fulbright Specialist and holds a position as a Visiting Scholar with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Prishtina (Kosovo). She has served as the editor of five teaching and learning journals, including her current appointment as co-editor of the Journal of General Education.

Special thanks to our planning committee!

  • Gina Londino-Smolar, Chair, IUI
  • James Geiger, IUK
  • Catherine Hebert-Annis, IUSB
  • Douglas Jerolimov, IUI
  • Diane Larson, IUN
  • Ben Storey, IUB
  • Andrew Swain, IUSB
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