Description: As we pass the tragic milestone of a year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher ed is in a collective mourning process that compounds personal loss with grief for the ways we used to teach, to learn together, to see each other in the halls without masks, and to advance our shared educational mission. This talk will be a reflection on coming to terms with this grieving for the higher ed that was, thinking through what we’ve learned about students and teaching from this experience, and building hope for what the future of higher ed might look like.
Bio: Josh Eyler is Director of Faculty Development and Director of the Thinkforward Quality Enhancement Plan at the University of Mississippi, where he is also on the faculty in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric. He previously worked on teaching and learning initiatives at Columbus State University, George Mason University, and Rice University. His research interests include the biological basis of learning, evidence-based pedagogy, and disability studies, and he is the author ofHow Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching (WVU, 2018). Josh is a frequent speaker at colleges and universities across the country, and he often consults with centers for teaching and learning on a range of issues related to programming and