Join us for the 31st Annual Fall Conference on Teaching and Learning. This year we are choosing to focus on empowering educational experiences that center human connection and relationships. Particularly, how relationships drive student success. This milestone event promises a day filled with insightful discussions, innovative teaching strategies, and networking opportunities. Don't miss this opportunity to connect with fellow educators and enhance your teaching practice!

Please register by August 11th, 2025 at 5 p.m.

A 2014 Gallup-Purdue survey of 30,000 college graduates found that those who had a strong, meaningful relationship with a faculty member were twice as likely to report high levels of well-being compared to their peers. Yet only 14% of those students reported having such a relationship (Mintz, 2023). Your expertise, your teaching practices, your understanding, and your guidance keep students engaged and on the path to graduation and a lifetime of empowered learning.

With this in mind, we’re focusing on a topic that drives student success: meaningful relationships. With the help of our Keynote Speakers, we will focus on educational experiences that center human connection and relationships. Our Annual Fall Conference on Teaching and Learning is a chance to explore this topic, discuss with your colleagues across campus, and learn from each other.

Join us for the 31st Annual Fall Conference on Teaching and Learning, featuring two expert keynotes: Dr. Peter Felten on Relationship-Rich Education and GVSU Provost and Executive Vice President for the Division of Academic Affairs, Dr. Jennifer Drake, and GVSU Vice President for Enrollment Development and Educational Outreach, Dr. B. Donta Truss, on Narratives of Today's First-Year Students. Visit our Fall Conference website for more details.

Questions? Contact Maggie Goss or the Pew FTLC.

Connections are Everything: How Relationships Drive Student Success

The classroom – whether physical, virtual, or hybrid – can be a place where students thrive if we design for learning and connection. With the rise of generative AI, human interactions are even more important for motivation, trust, well-being, and meaning-making. In this interactive session we will explore research on how intentional academic interactions offer flexible, scalable, and humane approaches to ensuring that all students experience welcome and care, become inspired to learn, and explore big questions about meaning and purpose. We also will consider how meaningful professional relationships contribute to faculty and staff well-being.

Professor Peter Felten is a professor of History, Executive Director of the Center for Engaged Learning, and Assistant Provost for Teaching and Learning at Elon University. He has published seven books about undergraduate education, including Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) co-authored with Leo M. Lambert, and his forthcoming book The SoTL Guide: [Re]Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (October 2025), co-authored by Nancy Chick and Katarina Mårtensson.

The following books are not only wonderful resources, but they will also be raffled during the 2025 Annual Fall Conference on Teaching and Learning and added to the Pew FTLC Library (068 JHZ). To the extent possible, these books will also be made available in eBook form through University Libraries.

Some of the Books Available in the Raffle: