Seminars for Excellence in Teaching
Since 2008, the Academy for Teaching and Learning has hosted a series of one-hour Seminars for Excellence in Teaching (SET) to help colleagues meet the historic expectations of excellence in teaching at Baylor. For new Teachers of Record (TOR), SET satisfy SACS requirements for professional development in teaching. For more experienced TOR, SET facilitate the sharing of ideas and insights about teaching and learning today and encourage participants to renew their commitments to inspirational teaching. SET are also a valuable resource in the preparation of graduate student Teachers of Record.
All members of the Baylor community are invited to attend SET in accord with our core commitments to seek learning and apply knowledge and to pursue excellence through continuous improvement.
SETs are recorded as noted below; if you cannot attend but would like to view the recording, please register, and a link to the recording will be sent to you
Spring 2026 SETs
Maura Jortner (English)
Online only: Zoom link will be sent to registrants - session will be recorded for later viewing
I’m a novelist so there’s nothing that I love more than mentoring students on how to write their own novel. But it can be a lot. Like 250 pages of a lot. We are educators, and we want to share our knowledge about the subjects we love, but it takes soooo much time. How do we do it without burning out or completely overwhelming our workload? In this session, I’m going to share tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way on how to effectively mentor students while managing a healthy life/work balance.
Sara Dye (English)
Online only: Zoom link will be sent to registrants - session will be recorded for later viewing
Dr. Sara Dye will share her methods of and experiences with using specifications (“specs”) grading, an assessment model that offers students greater clarity, agency, and ownership over their grade trajectory. In contrast to many traditional grading models, specs grading promotes and rewards initiative- and risk-taking, shifting student focus from earning the highest grade possible to learning.
Core Virtue Award Winners
Online only: Zoom link will be sent to registrants - session will be recorded for later viewing
Baylor’s Core curriculum allows students to develop skills and acquire knowledge in settings that consider what it means to be a virtuous, ethical person. One way we show that we value virtue development in Core classes is through the annual recognition of instructors who do this well. This SET will allow us to hear specific examples of virtue-development from winners of the Core Virtue Award, 2025: Dr. Kevin Dougherty, Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Honorifics and Professor of Sociology, Dr. Marlene Neill, Professor and Graduate Program Director in Journalism, Public Relations and New Media, and Dr. Ruth Oropeza, Lecturer in History. The aim of this SET is to give you inspiration and specific ideas for building ethical development into your own Core classes. Open conversation will follow our two panelists’ presentations. Core Virtue Award nominations are due in April; more details to come.
Megan Alstot (Academy for Teaching and Learning)
Online only: Zoom link will be sent to registrants - session will be recorded for later viewing
For Dr. Alstot's presentation and materials: https://sites.google.com/view/scaling-the-ai-mountain-alstot/home
With a focus on student learning, we will address the role of pedagogical guardrails faculty can construct to guide students toward safely and responsibly scaling the “AI Mountain.” Questions we will explore include: (1) What is AI’s role in your discipline? (2) What is AI’s role in your course? (3) How can AI foster pedagogical innovation? (4) How can AI foster learning innovation? (4) When and why should we (and students) avoid AI-use?
Ben Schwartz (Psychology & Neuroscience)
Online only: Zoom link will be sent to registrants - session will be recorded for later viewing
This session will describe one of the most impactful teaching practices we often overlook: multisensory instruction. Participants will get practical ideas for enhancing student learning learning with these practices.
Jon Eckert, Hannah Kapitaniuk, Wendi Singletary (Educational Leadership)
Online only: Zoom link will be sent to registrants - session will be recorded for later viewing
Using an established framework of "feedback, engagement, and well-being," this session reports on college students' views of instructor engagement, offering suggestions for busy instructors to make the most of limited time with students.
Leah Lamotey-Nakon (Religion)
Online only: Zoom link will be sent to registrants - session will be recorded for later viewing
This session will explore the intersection of Art, Bioethics, and AI, specifically, the interplay between humans and AI, preserving human agency.
Callie Kostelich (English)
Online only: Zoom link will be sent to registrants - session will be recorded for later viewing
This session will explore how we envision student writing in light of emerging technologies, like Gen AI. We will focus on designing process-based writing assignments that prioritize student learning, engagement, and authenticity. This is not a session on AI refusal, but rather, an opportunity to think deeply about the writing that we ask students to do, how it connects to our learning objectives, and the role of emerging technologies in the writing-intensive classroom.