Tufts' annual University-Wide Teaching Conference brings faculty together to reflect on and celebrate teaching excellence across disciplines and learning environments, from in-person classrooms to online programs to hybrid and multi-format instruction. This year, we explore a fundamental question: What brings meaning to our work as teachers, and how does that purpose evolve as higher education changes? How do we help students experience their learning as relevant and valuable?

Factors such as artificial intelligence and shifting public perceptions of higher education continue to reshape teaching and learning, challenging familiar assumptions and opening new possibilities. This conference invites us to engage both the challenges and the opportunities of this moment across all the spaces where Tufts faculty teach.

Join us on the picturesque campus of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton for a day of connection and inspiration. The conference will feature a keynote address by Sarah Rose Cavanagh, award-winning author and nationally recognized speaker, widely known for her engaging, research-informed work on emotion, motivation, and meaningful learning in higher education. Following the keynote, faculty-led concurrent sessions will offer opportunities to reflect on our purpose as educators and share effective and experiential approaches to teaching.

The day will conclude with a celebration of outstanding teaching through the Teaching with Technology Award, which honors innovative and transformative use of technology in learning, and the Online Teaching Excellence Award, which recognizes creativity and dedication in online and multi-format instruction.

Conference registration opens on April 1.

Call for Proposals

We invite your voice in this conversation. Whether you teach in physical classrooms, online synchronous or asynchronous environments, clinical settings, labs, studios, or hybrid spaces — we want to hear from you.

Share how you've discovered or rediscovered purpose in your teaching, developed approaches that help students find relevance in their learning, or navigated what it means to teach in the current evolving landscape of higher education.

We welcome proposals that are grounded in your experience as an educator and, where relevant, informed by the science of learning, pedagogical research, or other theoretical frameworks. Tell us not just what you do, but why it matters. Choose the format that best showcases your idea: workshop, discussion, experiential learning session, teaching tip, tech playground session, or another format of your choice.

Full submission details are available in the submission form below.

Submission deadline is Friday, March 20.

Past conferences