Dr. Emily Lardner
Vice President of Academic Affairs at Highline Community College, Des Moines, WA
Opening Plenary Address

Dr. Emily Lardner serves as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Highline College, a comprehensive community college serving about 13,000 students located south of Seattle, WA. Highline has the most diverse student population in the state of Washington and is one of the most diverse community colleges in the U.S. Under the leadership of Dr. John Mosby, Highline is implementing guided pathways as a campus- wide student success initiative designed to increase student success and close equity gaps.

Before becoming an administrator, Lardner served on the leadership team for the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education, based at The Evergreen State College. In that role, she helped design the National Summer Institute on Learning Communities, found and edit the open-access, peer-reviewed journal, Learning Communities Research and Practice, and facilitate a national project on improving the quality of student learning within learning communities. Through the Washington Center, Lardner provided on-campus consultations close to 100 two- and four-year colleges on implementing learning communities as student success strategy.

At the core of Lardner’s professional identify is her years of experience teaching academic writing to students at all levels. In addition to hundreds of colleagues, those thousands of students taught Lardner why what we do on our campuses and in our classrooms changes lives.

Plenary Address Title and Description: “Replenishing, Renewing, and Reimagining Learning Communities: Meeting this Moment”

In a time of declining enrollment, stagnant retention, growing inequality, and civil strife, what can we bring forward from the history of learning communities as an education reform movement to help us meet this moment?

As we reimagine our practice, how do we more fully engage in equity-minded, student-centered thinking and practice? What have we learned in the past ten years about making our institutions work for students, or as Tia McNair et al put it, walking our equity talk?

Why should we renew our individual and collective commitment to the learning community movement? What’s in it for students? At the same time, how can we make sure our practices going forward are life-giving and sustainable for faculty and staff?

Brad Lancaster
Water Conservation Advocate and Practitioner, Tucson, AZ
Keynote Address

Brad Lancaster is a dynamic teacher, consultant and designer of regenerative systems that sustainably enhance local resources and our global potential. He is the author of the award-winning book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond. He is also a co-founder of Neighborhood Foresters, which strives to repopulate Tuscon’s urban core with rain-irrigated, native food forests.

Brad has taught throughout North America as well as the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Australia. His hometown projects have included working with the City of Tucson as well as other municipalities to legalize, incentivize, and provide guidance on water-harvesting systems, demonstration sites, and policy. Since 1993, Brad has run a successful permaculture education, design, and consultation business focused on integrated regenerative approaches to landscape design, planning, and living.

In the Sonoran Desert, with just 11 inches (280 mmm) of average rainfall a year, Brad and his brother’s family harvest 100,000 gallons (378,000 liters) of rainwater a year on an eighth-acre (0.05 ha) urban lot and adjoining right-of-way. This water is then turned into living air conditioners of food-bearing shade trees, abundant gardens, and a thriving landscape that incorporates wildlife habitat, beauty, medicinal plants, and more. The overall goal of his work is to empower individuals and communities to make positive change in their own lives and neighborhoods by harvesting and enhancing free on-site resources such as water, sun, wind, shade, community, and much more. Brad is motivated in his work by the tens of thousands of people he has helped inspire to do likewise, go further, and continue our collective evolution.

Dr. Jillian Kinzie
Co-Director of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) at the Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University School of Education, Bloomington, IN

Jillian Kinzie is Interim Co-Director of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) at the Center for Postsecondary Research, Indiana University School of Education. She conducts research and leads project activities on the effective use of student engagement data to improve educational quality and issues of teaching and learning, and serves as senior scholar with the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) project.

She is co-author of Delivering on the Promise of High-Impact Practices: Research and Models for Achieving Equity, Fidelity, Impact, and Scale (2022), Assessment in Student Affairs (2016); Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education (2015); One Size Does Not Fit All: Traditional and Innovative Models of Student Affairs Practice, Second Edition (2014), and Student Success in College (2005/2010). She is co-editor of New Directions in Higher Education, is on the editorial board of Innovative Higher Education and the Journal of Postsecondary Student Success, and serves on the boards of the Washington Internship Institute and the Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education. She is a peer reviewer for several accreditors and regularly consults with colleges and universities about assessment, effective educational practice, inclusive excellence, high-impact practices, and support for student success.

Currently, she is PI on the Lumina Foundation funded “Assessing Quality and Equity in HIPs”; a Strada Foundation study, “Learning about Undergraduates’ Preparation for Work and Careers” an assessment of college students' career and workforce preparation, and an NSF supported project studying the implementation of scaffolded research-rich curriculum in STEM fields.

Kinzie earned her PhD from Indiana University in higher education with a minor in women’s studies. Prior to this, she served on the faculty of Indiana University and coordinated the master’s program in higher education and student affairs. She also worked in academic and student affairs at Miami University and Case Western Reserve University.
 

Plenary Address Title and Description: “Realizing High-Quality Learning Communities for Student Learning and Success”

As an identified high-impact practice (HIP) with a venerable history for fostering belongingness and increasing retention and academic and social cohesion, learning communities (LCs) appear to offer a solution to contemporary concerns in higher education to enrich student learning, enhance educational coherence, and assure equity. Yet, to be effective, LCs must be implemented with attention to outcomes, quality, fidelity, and equity. This presentation will discuss these four goals and share approaches that some institutions are deploying to address them, and then dive into recent data about students' exposure to the features that matter to high-quality LCs to stimulate discussion about enhancing practice.

Indigenous Enterprise with Kenneth Shirley
Native American Dance Troupe

Kenneth Shirley is the founder and CEO of Indigenous Enterprise. He recently graduated with his bachelors in arts from Arizona State University in 2018. He is a filmmaker collaborating with artists such as The Black Eyed Peas, Micki Free, and the Sydney Opera House.