Faculty Development Day

After conducting research of nationally known engaged humanities scholars and programs, the
directors selected Dr. Nicole King of University of Maryland-Baltimore to visit UP as a project consultant. An expert in place-based learning, King is the founder of the Baltimore Traces Project and has developed a successful Public Humanities minor--who better to help us imagine similar possibilities at UP? After meeting virtually with King and hearing details of her work, we realized her ideas warranted a wider audience; if we were going to bring King to campus to meet with us, why not find a way to introduce a larger swath of UP faculty to the kind of engaged humanities work King does?

To accomplish this, we proposed the theme "The City and the Campus: Models for Becoming the University for Portland" for UP's annual Faculty Development Day--a day-long conference attended by all UP faculty. Our theme was selected, providing a venue for King to give a keynote address to 180 faculty from across every discipline and lead a storytelling workshop with 40 attendees. The theme also inspired faculty from Biology and Nursing to lead panels on community engagement and place-based learning, transforming King's grant-consulting into a campus-wide opportunity to infuse engaged
humanities thinking into teaching and research across UP.

You can watch King's keynote address below; check out her slides here.