A three-day conference on the “Ecology of Teaching and Learning” was held at Loyola Marymount University recently under the auspices of the International Institute for SoTL Scholars and Mentors.
AJCU members LMU, Creighton University and Canisius College are among the six schools in the IISSAM consortium. The other consortium members are Columbia College Chicago, Truman State University and the University of Houston-Clear Lake.
The keynote speakers at the event were: Mary Taylor Huber, senior scholar emeritus at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the author of many books on scholarship; Eric Strauss, President’s Professor of Biology and director of the Center for Urban Resilience at LMU; and Jennifer Meta Robinson, senior lecturer at Indiana University, who publishes and speaks widely on the scholarship of teaching and learning. The conference was held June 1-3.
The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) serves as a lens to explore what role teaching and learning play in helping students assume responsibility for the world they inhabit. The conference this year focused on innovative teaching practices that relate to community and environment. Several sessions at this year’s conference directly explored methods linking teaching with environmental activities and were held at the Ballona Wetlands, adjacent to LMU.