Despite the cold and rainy day, we had a nice turnout for the Alexander Workshop Revisited Lunch+Learn today. Xinyu Liu, Industrial Engineering, shared how he has separated the "wheat from the chaff" and adopted the teach less, learn more philosophy that Patricia Alexander discussed last Monday. Wanda Nicklebur, Professional Pedagogy, noted that making the connection with your students and knowing them by name can really enhance the classroom experience and produce a positive semester. Kurt Dyhaug, Art, shared some of the special challenges he experiences as a teacher in the creative arts. Overall the conversation was very positive and the event allowed each of us to fill in the gaps of our notes from the original workshop. Are you looking for ways to to increase your students’ willingness to attend class, their ability to maintain interest, and their desire to learn? If so, mark the dates of March 8 and 9. Dr. Christy Price, professor of psychology at Dalton State College in Georgia, will be at LU to deliver two powerful workshop sessions about engaging millennial learners. Look for an email from CT+LE very soon with more information. The call for proposals for the Sixth Annual International Conference on Teaching and Learning is open until February 27. This conference will be held May 9-10th at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. It is designed for faculty, instructors, academic administrators, staff, and students from post-secondary institutions. They are encouraging joint applications from individuals at different universities. If you meet (or want to hire) someone with a bachelor's degree in history, what qualities should you be confident that the person has? What skills should the person have? One of the persistent criticisms of American higher education is that most people wouldn't really know, and that one college's history majors would be so different from another's that the phrase "B.A. in history" doesn't really convey much. Changing that is the idea behind the Lumina Foundation's "tuning" efforts, modeled after similar initiatives in Europe, to work with states and higher education systems to define what various degree levels generally mean. The foundation aspires to link various degree programs as well, through its Degree Qualifications Profile.