INDIANAPOLIS, IN (November 2012) Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) will host the 17th annual National Learning Communities Conference on November 8-10, 2012 at the University Place Conference Center and Hotel, located on IUPUI’s campus. Learning communities are generally defined as two or more linked courses which incorporate integrative learning and are offered in partnership with academic and student affairs.
Attendees from across the United States who are interested in learning communities will gather to share and learn about new ideas and innovations in learning communities, as well as best practices for established programs.
Representatives from institutions across the country will be presenting on learning communities topics at over seventy sessions during the course of the conference. Conference tracks include presentations on themed learning communities, learning communities administration, at-risk students, research, professional development, first-year students, innovation and creativity, integrative assignments, and technology.
The keynote speakers for the three-day conference are Joye Hardiman, Emily Lardner, and Gillies Malnarich. Hardiman has served as a core facilitator for the Ford Foundation Cultural Pluralism Summer Institutes and the FIPSE National Learning Community Dissemination Institutes and is currently a founding faculty member of the Institute for Cultural Reconnection, an international site-based learning academy dedicated to capacity building and technical assistance for people of African descent. Lardner and Malnarich are co-directors of the National Summer Institute on Learning Communities and the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education. They have co-authored three articles that have appeared in Change and Forbes magazines which have highlighted a shift in learning community practice that has occurred under their stewardship.
Conference co-chairs Heather Bowman, Director of First-Year Programs at IUPUI, and Lauren Chism, Director of Themed Learning Communities at IUPUI, agree that the conference will be an excellent opportunity for practitioners who work in learning communities to gain ideas for their own institution’s learning community programs.
# # #
For more information, contact Harriett Bennett at 317-274-5036 or email hbennett@iupui.edu.