Join us: Keynote Speaker Dwaine Plaza and Professor of Sociology will present “What is good teaching in the Post-Covid 19 classroom.”
This is still a key question that faculty are currently wrestling with in higher education because the culture and students’ expectations have dramatically changed since March 2020. During this presentation, he will use his own twenty-five years of classroom experience to make recommendations on how faculty at Oregon State University can be innovative and think differently about their teaching, testing, and engaging students using modern technologies and pedagogical approaches.
Professor Plaza’s Keynote address is a part of the Center for Teaching and Learning’s Quality Teaching Celebration on Thursday, May 4, from 4:30 – 6:00 PM at the Memorial Union Horizon Room, with a reception to follow. Registration
About the keynote speaker:
Dwaine Plaza, the recipient of the Richard M. Bressler Senior Faculty Teaching Award for 2022, is a Professor of Sociology in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University. He has been at OSU since 1997. His teaching includes Introduction to Sociology, Race and Ethnic Relations, U.S. Immigration Issues, and Applied Research Methods. Each year he teaches five classes that range from the first-year introductory level through to doctoral students. In all classes, he prompts students to think creatively, critique the everyday assumptions they take for granted, and leave the class with more questions than answers. In taking his classes, students should expect to be engaging in primary research (data collection), academic writing, critical thinking, working in teams, debating, discussing current social issues, and doing presentations. Some examples of the primary research his students engage in include visiting a local pioneer cemetery to study migration, mobility, and social class issues. Taking students out to rural Oregon to expose them to Native American communities and culture. Having students build their own Youtube teaching videos on topics that range from gender representation, social justice, and race relations in the United States. Directing students to go outside the classroom to ethnographically observe human relations and interactions at the gym, a college football game, or by doing a random act of kindness to a stranger as a social experiment. Dr. Plaza has also led groups of students on study-abroad trips to Cuba and Canada to expose them to the effects of globalization on foreign cultures. Professor Plaza strongly believes that giving students the tools they need to see their own value, analyze information and situations, and effectively solve problems in the 21st century is what we are about at Oregon State University.
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