Five Years Bolder

Learning doesn’t stop after you’re no longer a student. For the past five years, Barnard students and faculty have engaged in a different kind of learning than the traditional route of continuing education. At the behest of students, in 2018, students and faculty collaborated to launch the annual Barnard Bold Conference.

A student-led event, Bold facilitates conversations between faculty, students, and staff, with the intention of continuing to strengthen teaching and learning. Support for the conference comes by way of the Center for Engaged Pedagogy (CEP), whose mission is to develop transformative, collaborative, and holistic approaches to teaching and learning, including assessment and curricular projects.

This year’s Barnard Bold Conference will be the first since the start of the pandemic to fully return to a live format, a fitting note as students and faculty mark the five-year anniversary of the event. CEP’s interim executive director, Melissa Wright, says that the format will feature a full day of on-campus conversation and learning and a keynote address from Bold’s creator, Shreya Sunderram ’19.

Last year’s event featured sessions on “Evolving Engagement: Reimagining Educational Experience” and “Examining Exams: A Reimagination of Traditional Assessments.” For 2023, students, faculty, and staff can all submit ideas surrounding teaching and learning. Recent proposals include sessions on digital humanities coursework, the “Undesign the Redline” exhibit, and ChatGPT (the controversial new AI writing tool), Wright says.

Annabelle Tseng, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia, has been working with Bold since 2019, and this year will assist CEP in its support of the event. “The nice thing about the event is that it’s not about critiquing what isn’t working in the student/faculty relationship, but about strengthening teaching and learning at Barnard and finding solutions that are more inclusive and welcoming,” Tseng explains.

The Bold sessions in previous years have served as student-led laboratories for exploring emergent teaching and learning topics with faculty, staff, and students within the Barnard community, according to Wright. For example, past sessions on grading and assessment informed the CEP’s development of the popular Alternative Approaches to Grading Workshop in June 2022. This was useful for expanding the department’s research base on rigorous and anti-oppressive grading practices as the College officially transitioned to P/F grading for two courses: the First-Year Seminar and First-Year Writing.

Last year, students identified three areas to focus on and then selected topics within them. Support from CEP ranged from the logistical to the advisory. “We supported them as a sounding board on who to invite as panelists and what questions to ask them,” Tseng says. “It’s so nice to see how much students care for their instructors and each other and to help continue the work that was started a few years ago.”

As the live March event approaches, CEP, students, staff, and faculty will formulate the right mix of presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and collective brainstorming. Together, they’ll enrich the learning experience for students and faculty alike.

Check out our slideshow below for the other parts of our “Breaking Norms” feature story.