In an environment marked by rapid change and increasing complexity, providing the best education for our students requires relentless attention to our own continuous learning and growth as professionals. Moreover, only those institutions that are flexible, adaptive, and productive—learning organizations, as Peter Senge dubbed them—will excel. As Senge states, learning organizations are work environments "where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together."

Keeping up with major developments in our disciplinary areas and building our content expertise are but part of the answer. Increasing our understanding of what works in teaching and learning; fostering creativity, agility, shared vision, better collaboration and teamwork; and, ultimately, translating our new knowledge and skills into more effective teaching practice is what finally counts.

This conference will explore what individual faculty and staff do to foster their own continuous learning and development as teaching professionals and how colleges, universities, and other groups strive to create environments that characterize learning organizations. It will feature what they’ve learned from these approaches and how teaching practices and student learning have improved as a result. Sessions might include systematic study and public dialogue of key issues in teaching and learning such as models of classroom research, action research, and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects; teaching circles and other faculty development approaches; groups working to interpret and use NSSE and other assessment data; and practical application of approaches grounded in higher education scholarship.

We invite proposals for concurrent sessions that disseminate and model effective practice; promote stimulating dialogue, inquiry, and problem-solving; or engage participants in exploring opportunities for post-conference inter-institutional collaboration on topics such as these: