Winter Conference 2026

Breakfast Sandwiches and Coffee at Sanford/Lake Mary Campus

• Multipurpose Room C-110A/B
• Book Swap Kickoff (outside C-108) 
  • Drop off some textbooks. Take some textbooks!

• Assembly Hall C-108

T.E.A.C.H. Panel 

• Faculty
• Assembly Hall C-108

Keynote Address: Flourishing in Higher Education: Strategies for Enhancing Faculty Wellbeing

• Benjamin Kutsyuruba is an accomplished scholar in the field of education, recognized for his influential research and publications. He has authored books such as Teachers’ Work in Times of Uncertainty and A Guide to Alberta School Law (2nd ed.), and edited notable volumes including The Lifecycle of Trust in Education and The Emerald Handbook of Wellbeing in Higher Education. 
• This session explores flourishing as the highest form of human functioning encompassing emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing. Drawing on research in positive organizations, leadership, and appreciative inquiry, it presents strategies for creating cultures of flourishing in higher education. The keynote will examine multiple wellbeing dimensions: cultural, emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social, spiritual, and vocational. The goal is to provide actionable models and approaches to nurture holistic wellbeing and flourishing across higher education institutions.
• Assembly Hall C-108

• Theme: AI And You!

• Multipurpose Room C-110A/B

• Theme: T.E.A.C.H. - Let's learn from each other! 

• Assembly Hall C-108

• Assembly Hall C-108

• Multipurpose Room C-110A/B

• Assembly Hall C-108

Explore Canvas Enhanced Rubrics and Microsoft Copilot in this interactive session designed to simplify rubric creation and feedback. Learn how to duplicate rubrics, reorder rating scales, and import via CSV using Canvas’s new features. Then, see how Copilot can help you generate custom rubrics tailored to your course outcomes and prepare them for seamless Canvas integration. Whether you're building from scratch or refining existing rubrics, you'll leave with practical strategies to save time and improve clarity.

Presenters: Elizabeth Savory and Ebony Collier 

Discover how to use Copilot to create Socratic-style chatbots that support deeper student learning. This session explores prompt engineering, strategies for evaluating student reasoning, and ways to apply AI in foundational courses to promote insight over answer-seeking. We’ll explore how Socratic questioning using AI can help students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. You'll learn practical strategies and build a prototype chatbot to use in your own class, no prior AI experience required.

Presenters: Devin Monnens and Michael Gennaro 

Join us in harnessing the power of Copilot Agents to create personalized AI tutors that support student learning and studying. We'll share how we collaborated to build an AI tutor for students preparing for a state exam, then guide you in customizing our prompt template for your course. During this hands-on session, we'll walk through setting up your agent and brainstorm ideas for introducing it to your students. You'll leave with a clear path to deploy your own AI tutor!

Presenters: Rachel Novella and Nicole Reale 

We know our students are using AI, and many of us are helping them use it ethically and in ways that build fluency. This session proposes a S.L.O.P. framework to help students evaluate AI output for structure, language, originality, and proof. This framework can help your students recognize common issues with AI-generated writing and revise it meaningfully so their work reflects their own thinking even when they use AI to help create it.

Presenter: Lesley Kamphaus 

In this professional development session, Dr. Maya Byfield shares her journey to earning NIH AIM-AHEAD certifications in Artificial Intelligence and Health Research and All of Us Researcher Workbench Training. Participants will learn practical steps to access these opportunities, integrate data science into STEM teaching, and inspire students to engage with real-world research.

Presenter: Maya Byfield 

In this panel session, Katherine Kellen will lead a peer discussion about assessment in an AI-age. How do instructors ensure the learner did the work being assessed? What criteria do instructors award less or more credit for in this AI-age? How do they manage the labor of shifting assessment practices? Additionally, results from Cheryl Sherlock's College Faculty Survey: Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom will be shared and discussed by the panel.

Panelists:
Margaret Jenkins, psychology
Lauri Schoneck, IDS and GED
Cheryl Sherlock, computer science
Briyanna Jenkins, Director, Community Standards and Strategic Outreach; Student Conduct and IDS 

Presenter: Kate Kellen

This session presents research-based insights into how faculty are adopting generative AI in higher education and the institutional factors that most strongly influence their willingness to use it. Drawing on empirical findings from two recent studies using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), the session explains why attitudes—not just usefulness or ease of use—are the strongest predictors of faculty integration of AI into teaching and learning. The data highlights key barriers, including ethical concerns, uncertainty about academic integrity, and a lack of clear institutional guidance.

Participants will learn what the research reveals about the conditions that increase or inhibit adoption and what colleges must do to support effective, responsible use of AI. The session offers practical, research-aligned recommendations for policy development, faculty training, and institutional leadership, moving beyond one-time workshops or tool demonstrations. By the end of the session, attendees will understand why adoption is not a technology problem but a support and culture problem—and what actions institutions must take now to ensure faculty and students are prepared for an AI-driven academic future.

Presenters: Tony Robinson and Mubarak Banisakher

We will be using AI to create and lead a session of Chair Yoga and/or Meditation

Presenter: Geoff Nelson 

Should we teach AI fluency or ban it from big assignments? The answer is yes — to both. Join us to navigate the double-edged prompt of higher education’s AI era and learn strategies to empower, not outsource, student thinking.

Presenter: Lauri Uttich

Join us for an in-depth session on Seminole State College’s pending policy and procedures for AI usage and governance, including the privacy and security safeguards built into enterprise versions of Microsoft Copilot and Zoom AI Companion. We’ll explore ethical versus non-ethical AI practices, the role of prevention software, and what constitutes an acceptable approach when using AI detectors with student work.

Presenter: Hank Glaspie

What would it mean to understand leadership as a generative, life-giving practice? This session will provide an overview of 4P framework for positive leadership in higher education: purpose, presence, passion, and play. Grounded in the research on the role of positive leadership in cultivating flourishing educational communities, participants in this workshop will learn about strategies for developing and animating the values of purpose, passion, presence and play in their workplace. Noting the benefits of framing workplace experiences from a positive, appreciative perspective, the workshop will focus on how leading with 4P values can contribute to further growing organizational cultures where all may flourish.

Presenter: Benjamin Kutsyuruba, Keynote Speaker 

Canvas Course Analytics provides instructors with a powerful yet often underused window into student engagement. This session will explore how to interpret metrics such as page views, participation, and grades to identify patterns that may predict student success or signal early risk. Participants will learn practical strategies for using these insights to reach out proactively, improve course design, and foster stronger student connections, all within the tools already built into Canvas.

Presenters: Samson Kelly and Samantha Shaw 

Zoom Workplace’s Clips video feature offers an exciting means to go beyond written feedback and deepen engagement with online and in-person students while simultaneously creating space for more efficient use of time during in-person class sessions. Learn how to utilize this versatile and easy-to-use resource to create dynamic assignment feedback videos, and other video content, that enhance your approach to course instruction and expand the footprint of instructor-student engagement.

Presenter: Christopher O'Brien 

Embedded librarians partner directly with faculty by joining courses to design research modules, develop and refine assignments, monitor student questions, and coach students through their projects in support of SSC's "Information Literacy" student learning outcome. Last year, librarians collaborated with more than 350 course sections. Join us to learn how our embedded librarian model can enhance student learning, improve their research skills, and ease your teaching workload.

Presenters: Ross Martin, Claire Miller, Amy Mendoza

Join me as I share insights, tips, and experiences from the Master Teacher Seminar held this past May in Pensacola, a week-long retreat with educators from across the state colleges. From AI integration to classroom management and keeping students engaged, this session highlights best practices across disciplines. I have already implemented several of these ideas in my own classes this semester, and they are working.

Presenters: Sarah Dhalla 

We all have strategies that work in our classrooms—those moments when students are genuinely engaged, collaborating, and thinking critically. But too often, we don't get the chance to hear what's happening across disciplines or learn from the creative approaches our colleagues are using.
This workshop is about sharing what's working. Drs. Hudspeth and Larson will each share a best practice from our classes, but the real goal is to create space for all of us to learn from each other. What does meaningful student engagement look like in math? In nursing? In history? How are you getting students invested in the work, not just going through the motions?
We'll work through a hands-on activity together—pairing up, tackling a realistic teaching scenario, and sharing strategies—so everyone leaves with fresh ideas they can adapt to their own content and students. This isn't about reinventing the wheel; it's about discovering what wheels are already turning in classrooms across campus and how we can learn from each other's successes.

Presenters - Holly Larson and Connie Hudspeth 

This presentation will discuss the Do's & Don'ts of leading high-performance teams. Servant leadership has been shown to correlate strongly with high team performance. Servant leaders must create a safe environment where team members can freely exchange ideas, ask questions, and share perspectives. They must also identify team members’ strengths, build on them, assign roles accordingly, and provide clear expectations, including the team’s purpose and each team member's role.

Presenters: James Rucks 

Explore how ancient practices such as sound bowls, drumming, journaling, connecting to earth and PLAY can help us to show up in our modern, technology driven lives in a whole and happy way.

Presenter: H. Brooke Dixon

Ever wondered what a HIPs-designated course really looks like in practice? Join us for a collaborative, behind-the-scenes session featuring faculty who have successfully earned HIPs designation. They will share authentic examples from their courses—assignments, engagement strategies, reflections, and application narratives. Each faculty presenter will be paired with a HIPs Ambassador who will help unpack how these elements connect to the HIPs framework and why they meet (or exceed) designation expectations.

If you learn best by seeing real models and concrete examples, this session is for you.

Presenters: Hailee Handel, Shelly Deans, and Melissa Mesman

Join to learn more about the Focus 2 Career Assessment tool. Following the Holland Code for Career Interest Theory students can take assessments on skills, interests, values, and personality to learn what college major and career would be a great match for future success.

Presenter: Candace Lehmann

This hands-on workshop will help faculty of all levels of AI-experience in the creation of assignments, agents, and AI-class tutors. All participants will leave with at least one assignment idea, a list of effective, fill-in-the-blank AI prompts, and a prototype AI agent for their courses.

Presenter: Michael Gennaro