UT System Webinar Series 2025-2026

Educating for Impact: Building World-Ready Students

UT System Webinar Series 2025-2026

This series is created by the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers and UT System Educational Developers. 2nd Thursday of each month, 1-2pm in Zoom

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Educating for Impact: Building World-Ready Students

We invite faculty, administrators, staff, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students across the UT System to join our monthly webinar series.  This series explores the enduring value of the core curriculum, and the foundational scholarly skills students gain through it. Sessions will highlight how the core curriculum fosters cultural and social capital, analytical thinking, global citizenship, and interdisciplinary awareness—skills that prepare graduates to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing workplace and society. Faculty-led conversations will also showcase innovative practices in student partnership, productive struggle in the age of AI, and new ways of making learning visible and durable. Together, these sessions affirm the power of higher education to future-proof our students while deepening the impact of teaching and learning.  Each session will be organized by the respective Center for Teaching and Learning, or its equivalent, on participating campuses, providing a platform for sharing insights, strategies, and innovations.

Webinar Series Schedule

#

Date

Topic

Presenters

Campus(es)

1

9/11

What is the value of higher education? Future proofing our students

Brent Iverson

Austin

2

10/9

Cultural and Social Capital

Bruce Rudy, Associate Professor of Management

Claudia Arcolin

San Antonio

3

11/13

Solving What Matters: Real-World Problems, Real-World Thinking

Danielle Bailey

Tyler

4

12/11

Creating Global Citizens / International education

Carol Cirulli Lanham

Dallas

5

1/15

Interdisciplinary Awareness

Jennifer Sells

MD Anderson

6

2/12

 Listening to Learn: Eliciting and Reflecting on Feedback from Student Partners in Teaching

Alyssa G. Cavazos

Elianna Olivo

Ris Cortez

Rio Grande Valley

7

3/12

Productive Struggling, Critical Thinking, and AI

Beth Fleener

Peggy Semingson

Arlington

8

4/9

 Mapping What Matters: Making student Learning Visible Beyond the Gradebook

Morgan Ginther

Molly Hatcher

Elon Lang

Austin

We will be discussing the increased value of a broad education in an era when our graduates are entering a dynamic workplace that will force many, if not most, to change their careers multiple times.  The sometimes neglected skills and experiences associated with the core curriculum will almost certainly take on additional importance during these inevitable transitions. This discussion will be particularly timely due to the increased attention that the core curriculum has received recently. 

In this session, we will explore strategies to help students leverage cultural and social capital for academic success, career readiness, and lifelong learning. This session highlights how to recognize and build upon students’ diverse strengths to prepare them for the complexities of the global workforce. Faculty will share practices for connecting classroom learning with networks, resources, and skills that matter beyond graduation. 
(The session may also cover a pilot we are doing with Territorium - through the UT System - for the Digital Learning Wallet. I will be able to provide more details in a few weeks).

UT Tyler’s Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) focuses on real-world problem solving as a means to strengthen students’ analytical thinking and applied learning. In this session, QEP faculty panelists will share their experiences integrating authentic, complex problems into their courses, highlighting the difficulties and opportunities that come with addressing complex real-world problems and strategies for assessing problem-solving activities both within and beyond traditional course content. The conversation will underscore how these practices highlight the enduring value of higher education and contribute to preparing world-ready graduates.

Please join us to learn about UTRGV’s Students as Learners and Teachers at a Hispanic Serving Institution (SaLT HSI) program—the first student partnership program at a Hispanic Serving Institution. We will share how we can elicit and reflect on feedback from student partners in teaching by highlighting teaching and learning strategies that build on students’ diverse agilities while creating relevant, adaptable, and flexible alignment to their academic and professional aspirations. Our conversation will also explore evidence-based practices toward developing meaningful and trustworthy partnerships with students for teaching and learning growth in and beyond the classroom. 
In an era where instant answers are just a click away, the valuable learning process of productive struggling and critical thinking—which foster perseverance and resilience—is at risk. Productive struggling is a learning process that fosters perseverance and resilience in learning.  With the advancement of AI, learners are bypassing the discomfort and uncertainty stage found in cognitive development and building critical thinking when learning something new.  In this session, presented by UT Arlington, we will discuss the stages of cognitive development, where AI fits in cognitive development, and teaching strategies to support deeper learning and retention of content knowledge across multiple disciplines.

How can universities demonstrate the real-world value of higher education while honoring faculty autonomy and disciplinary depth? This session explores a pilot Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) that helps students articulate durable skills like critical thinking and ethical reasoning developed in coursework. Presenters will share a four-step process for competence mapping, strategies for engaging faculty and departments, and lessons learned about aligning course-level competences with broader institutional goals. Discussion will center on how this work can be adapted to different institutional contexts to advance student success, faculty sense of purpose, and public trust in higher education.