1:00 – 1:50 PM

Highlands Undergraduate Enrichment
Attendance: Open to Learning Community Faculty
Presenter: Nallely Martinez Amaya
Location: Student Union Building, Room 320

This session, for Learning Community faculty, will allow LC faculty teams to finalize the integration of their LCs with the support of other LC faculty and the HUE Director.

1:00 – 1:50 PM

Creating Inclusive & Effective Classroom Discussions
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Presenter: Jacob Avery, PhD
Location: Student Union Building, Room 321

The purpose of this session is considering the pedagogical utility of discussion as a teaching method, delineate characteristics of (in)effective and (non) inclusionary discussion, and envision ourselves, as teachers, creating dynamic classroom discussions. Student and teacher dialogue – discussion – plays a major role
in the teaching and learning enterprise within college classroom settings. Discussions frequently involve direct, sustained contemplation of empirical data, written texts, problems, dilemmas, issues, or positions. A defining feature of discussion is that students have considerable agency in the construction of knowledge, understanding, or interpretation. Along with articulating research-based best practices for leading inclusive
and effective classroom discussions, this session will invite NMHU Faculty into dialogue with their crossdisciplinary colleagues and invite them to learn from one another. How to create inclusive and effective discussions is a pressing pedagogical issue that bears upon teaching practices that promote student wellbeing,
creating space for students to reflect upon their lives and livelihoods, and ensuring that all students feel welcomed in our classrooms. Based upon overall success of this session during Fall 2021 Development Days, it seems there is a real “hunger” among our faculty for this type of content, and I would be thrilled to once again lead an extended session about creating inclusive and effective classroom discussions.

1:00 – 1:50 PM

A Holistic Approach to Students Health and Wellbeing: The Development and Implementation of a New Model of CARE
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Presenters: Leon Bustos, MA & Kimberley Blea, PhD
Location: Student Union Building, Room 322

With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the physical and mental scars of one of the worst wildfires in New Mexico’s history, The Center for Advocacy, Resources, Education, and Support (CARES) has worked to identify gaps in the support we offer students at Highlands. The case for holistic health promotion is
reinforced by studies suggesting that health behaviors predict academic success. Through close collaboration with the Dean of Students and serving as the 2021/2022 Presidential Fellow, a new initiative has been developed by the Director of Health Education and Wellness to promote holistic health and wellness behaviors. This new model of CARE has been carefully designed to enhance students’ resilience, improve student success, enhance retention, and ultimately contribute to successful college completion. This session will highlight the experiences of serving as the Presidential Fellow, the importance of crisis management, and the inspiration behind developing and implementing a novel approach to identifying and addressing the needs students have while at NMHU.

2:00 – 2:50 PM

Podcast Pedagogy: Sonic Media and Nested Learning
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Presenters: Thomas Brooks, PhD & Daniel Chadborn, PhD
Location: Student Union Building, Room 321

The present workshop will invite participants to explore podcasts as a learning medium for students. Podcasts are an intimate modality for content delivery where the speaker is embedded in the daily lives of the listener, thus particular considerations must be made when determining the appropriateness and context of utilizing podcasts within higher educational context. This workshop will explore assigning podcasts as either required
or supplemental course content, how instructors can create their own podcasts to enhance learning, as well as the ways to get students involved in podcasts to co-create knowledge in their courses.

2:00 – 2:50 PM

Question, Persuade, Refer to Save a Life:
QPR Gatekeeper Training
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Presenter: Deanna Valdez, PhD
Location: Student Union Building, Room 322

QPR stands for Question, Persuade, and Refer — the 3 simple steps anyone can learn to help save a life from suicide. Just as people trained in CPR and the Heimlich Maneuver help save thousands of lives each year, people trained in QPR learn how to recognize the warning signs of a suicide crisis and how to question, persuade, and refer someone to help. According to the Surgeon General’s National Strategy for Suicide Prevention (2001), a gatekeeper is someone in a position to recognize a crisis and the warning signs that someone may be contemplating suicide. Gatekeepers can be anyone, but include parents, friends, neighbors, teachers, ministers, doctors, nurses, office supervisors, squad leaders, foremen, police officers, advisors, caseworkers, firefighters, and many others who are strategically positioned to recognize and refer someone at risk of suicide. Each year thousands of Americans are saying “Yes” to saving the life of a friend, colleague, sibling, or neighbor.

3:00 – 3:50 PM

Culturally Responsive Practices in STEM
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Presenter: Taik Kim, PhD
Location: Student Union Building, Room 320

New Mexico Highlands (NMHU) is a public, state-supported Hispanic-Serving Institution, a large isolated rural area characterized by economic stagnation that shapes an environment for low educational attainment. NMHU serves a diverse student population, including primarily Hispanic (56.9%), Native American (10.3%), African American (7.7%), (NMHU Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Research [OIER], 2021). These
students are historically underrepresented in STEM fields (National Action Council Minorities in Engineering, 2014; Frontiers in Education, 2022).

It is imperative that new strategies are implemented to improve student learning and address declining interest, lack of preparedness, and low persistence of students in STEM disciplines. Producing better prepared K-12 teachers who have a solid grounding in STEM will help to raise the caliber of high school
STEM educators who are then better positioned to produce better prepared incoming college students. By providing more quality STEM teachers, the outcome is certain to narrow the student achievement gap between low and high student achiever thereby producing significant broader impacts.

This presentation is to share the capstone project for the pre service teacher’s math and science methodology classes. The growing use of technology has prompted questions about whether pre-service teachers/K-12 students have the adequate skills and exposure to technology they’ll need to fill workforce needs later in life. Integrating Science/Math and technology will be very critical, especially for teacher candidates. While students learn information from books, it is even more exciting when they get to see that information in a physical and visual format relating to local community or cultural appearances.

3:00 – 3:50 PM

Audience, Clarity, Design: A Toolkit for Assignment Sheets and Prompts
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Presenter: Amanda May, PhD
Location: Student Union Building, Room 321

Writing assignments across disciplines often begin with a description or assignment sheet detailing assignment expectations. This workshop invites faculty members to discuss, share, and apply techniques for developing such documents, particularly for writing assignments. My objective in offering this session is to better support writing pedagogies across campus, as well as help faculty—new and experienced—better prepare Highlands’ student population for writing success.

This 50-minute workshop will engage faculty members in several ways throughout its three main components. In the first, I will introduce the traditional genre of “assignment sheet” (a separate document providing information about an assignment, in this case writing, which students can reference to succeed in a writing task) and the related genre of “assignment description/prompt” (a textual addition to another document, such as a syllabus, that describes a writing task and that students can reference to succeed). In particular, we will focus on audience awareness, particularly when it comes to tone. The second component invites participants to examine several examples to identify effective approaches, as well as areas for improvement. While this may include language, design will also be discussed. Using this collaboratively generated list as a jumping off point, in the third component, participants will apply strategies by workshopping their own writing-related assignment prompts or sheets (or one of the examples).

This session is geared towards teachers in any discipline who include writing assignments in their course. Participants are encouraged to bring their own assignment prompts/sheets.

3:00 – 3:50 PM

Mindfulness Practice
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Presenter: Lara Heflin, PhD
Location: Student Union Building, Room 322

Mindfulness practice doesn’t remove the stressors from life, but it can help you deal with stress more effectively and cultivate self compassion and self-care. This interactive session will lead attendees through 2-3 mindfulness practices that they can continue practicing on their own.

4:00 – 4:50 PM

Talking HIPs
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Presenters: Ben Villarreal, EdD, Ann Wolf, PhD, Luke Ritter, PhD, & Sebastian Medina, PhD
Location: Student Union Building, Room 321

In this roundtable discussion, learn about the CTE’s High-Impact Practices Institutes on Diversity and Global Learning from the Director and some of the Winter participants. They’ll discuss the experience of the institute itself, what they learned, and how they took that into their classrooms this past Spring. Finally, attendees will learn a little about HIPs and which the CTE hopes to provide more support for in the future.

4:00 – 4:50 PM

Faculty Sabbatical Presentations
Attendance: Open to All Faculty
Location: Student Union Building, Room 320