Speaker series

The Office for Teaching and Learning (OTL) hosts speakers who are invited to campus each semester. These events help to bring new and insightful ways of thinking about teaching and learning at Wayne State. The presenters are national scholars whose areas of expertise have a broad influence on higher education and student success. The OTL coordinates a campus-wide keynote address open to all of our faculty members.


Winter 2023

head and shoulders portrait photo of smiling African American man wearing a gray hat and blazer

The 2023 Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon keynote speaker, Dr. Stephen John Quaye, is a professor in the Higher Education and Student Affairs Program at The Ohio State University; editor of The Journal of Higher Education; and past president of ACPA: College Student Educators International. His research concentrates on engaging students in difficult dialogues about privilege, power, and oppression, and the strategies educators use to facilitate productive dialogues about these topics. His current work focuses on student and scholar activism, as well as the strategies Black educators and students use to heal from racial battle fatigue.

Fostering Student Engagement through an Equity Lens

Noon - 2 p.m. Thursday, Apr. 20; Student Center Hilberry AB

The purpose of this talk is to distinguish between involvement and engagement in order to foster student success. Participants will also learn how to use an equity lens to reflect on their teaching practices to ensure that they are grounded in equity and support the needs of students with minoritized identities.

Register on Academica for Innovations Keynote 


Previous speakers

  • Dr. Bettina L. Love, Winter 2022

    head and shoulders portrait photo of an African American woman with long locs looking intently into camera

    Dr. Bettina L. Love: "Living A Hip Hop & Abolitionist Life: Resistance, Creativity, Hip Hop Civics Ed, Intersectionality, & Black Joy," noon - 2 p.m. Tuesday, Apr. 12, 2022

  • Dr. Alyssa Hadley Dunn, Winter 2021
    Dr. Alyssa Hadley Dunn: Teaching the Days After, What to do when you don't know what to do
    Dr. Alyssa Hadley Dunn: Teaching the Days After, What to do when you don't know what to do
  • Dr. Thomas Tobin, Winter 2019
    Dr. Thomas Tobin: Five Teaching Secrets for Success with Today's Mobile, Time Crunched Students
    Dr. Thomas Tobin: Five Teaching Secrets for Success with Today's Mobile, Time Crunched Students
  • Dr. Saundra McGuire, Winter 2017
    Flyer for Saundra McGuire, Keynote Speaker at the 2017 WSU Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon on March 28, 2018, with a talk entitled Teach Students How to Learn sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
    Flyer for Saundra McGuire, Keynote Speaker at the 2017 WSU Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon on March 28, 2018, with a talk entitled Teach Students How to Learn sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
  • Martin Springborg, Winter 2016
    Flyer for Martin Springborg, Keynote Speaker at the 2016 WSU Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon on March 24, 2016, with a talk entitled Teaching & Learning: Visualizing Our Work sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
    Flyer for Martin Springborg, Keynote Speaker at the 2016 WSU Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon on March 24, 2016, with a talk entitled Teaching & Learning: Visualizing Our Work sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
  • Dr. Valerie Young, Fall 2015
    Flyer for Valerie Young, Keynote Speaker at the 2015 event for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduate students on November 15, 2015, with a talk entitled Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome & How to Thrive in Spite of it sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
    Flyer for Valerie Young, Keynote Speaker at the 2015 event for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduate students on November 15, 2015, with a talk entitled Why Capable People Suffer from the Impostor Syndrome & How to Thrive in Spite of it sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
  • Dr. Nilanjana Dasgupta, Winter 2015
    Flyer for Nilanjana Dasgupta, Keynote Speaker at the 2015 WSU Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon on March 19. 2019, with a talk entitled Five Teaching Secrets for Success with Today's Mobile, Time-Crunched Student sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
    Flyer for Nilanjana Dasgupta, Keynote Speaker at the 2015 WSU Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon on March 19. 2019, with a talk entitled Five Teaching Secrets for Success with Today's Mobile, Time-Crunched Student sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
  • Dr. Carl Wieman, Fall 2014
    Flyer for Carl Wieman, Keynote Speaker at the 2014 WSU event on September 16, 2015, with a talk entitled Taking a Scientific APproach to Science Education sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
    Flyer for Carl Wieman, Keynote Speaker at the 2014 WSU event on September 16, 2015, with a talk entitled Taking a Scientific APproach to Science Education sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
  • Dr. Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, Winter 2014
    Flyer for Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, Keynote Speaker at the 2014 WSU Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon on March 19, 2014, with a talk entitled Stereotype Threat and the Psychology of Achievement Gaps: Causes and Solutions to Student Underperformance sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning
    Flyer for Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, Keynote Speaker at the 2014 WSU Innovations in Teaching & Learning Luncheon on March 19, 2014, with a talk entitled Stereotype Threat and the Psychology of Achievement Gaps: Causes and Solutions to Student Underperformance sponsored by the Office for Teaching & Learning