Promoting Student Success Series
The Promoting Student Success Series encourages campuswide conversations about promoting and advancing the culture of student success. This lecture series has been designed to inform the development of a vision for the role of WSU educators in promoting student success.
Each academic year, WSU educators hear from nationally renowned speakers regarding student success efforts in various contexts. Our goal is to identify strategies to better coordinate WSU efforts around student success and better define the roles of educators in promoting student success.
2024-2025
Oct. 24, 2024
WSU Keynote Address & Breakouts
Richard Detweiler, author of The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry, and Accomplishment, makes a strong case for the importance of a liberal arts general education. Please join us for a Promoting Student Success Speaker Series keynote with a discussion following about why general education affects people positively for their entire lifetime so that we are better prepared for conversations about why higher education matters.
→ Keynote Address
- 1 - 2 p.m.
- Shepherd Union Ballrooms (SU 313)
→Thematic Break-Out Discussion and Reports
- 2 - 3 p.m.
- Shepherd Union Ballrooms (SU 313)
- While the breakouts will be more meaningful with in-person attendance, if you cannot attend, you may join virtually. Look for the Zoom link in the announcements.
Dr. Richard A. Detweiler (Rick) is a social psychologist specializing in intercultural relations, and earned his MA and PhD from Princeton University.
With years of experience as a college president, professor, and consultant, he also holds an appointment as foundation fellow at Oxford's Harris Manchester College and is President Emeritus of New York's Hartwick College and of the Great Lakes Colleges Association. Previously he was a distinguished fellow at the Council on Library and Information Resources in Washington, DC, and professor of psychology at two different liberal arts universities.
He is the founder of the Global Liberal Arts Alliance (a coalition of 30 universities from 16 countries that works to strengthen learning in the tradition of the liberal arts and sciences) and recently completed a nearly 14 year presidency of the Great Lakes Colleges Association (a consortium of selective liberal arts colleges and universities). Professionally he has been an active researcher, consultant, and author in higher education, technology initiatives in higher education, institutional planning and research, intercultural relations, international education, and psychology. He has published dozens of articles related to higher education, psychology, and intercultural relations, and speaks frequently on issues related to the future of higher education, the role of technology in education, and the values of the liberal arts and sciences. He was a founding dean of the Frye Leadership Institute, the recipient of a Carnegie Mellon University/AMS Award for leadership in the innovative use of computer and communications technology, and has served as a board member of a number of higher education organizations.
His book reporting on the character, method, and impact of liberal arts education, The Evidence Liberal Arts Needs: Lives of Consequence, Inquiry, and Accomplishment was published by The MIT Press in 2021.
August 19, 2024
WSU Back to School Keynote Address & Workshop
Author, contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, speaker, reporter and producer on public-radio and founder of Open Letters online magazine.
→ Keynote Address
- 10:30 - 11:30 a.m.
- Austad Auditorium at the Browning Center
Join Keynote Webinar
Passcode: 333439
→ Workshop
- 1-2 p.m.
- Shepherd Union Skyroom (SU 404)
Join Workshop Webinar
Passcode: 679519
Paul Tough is the author, most recently, of The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us (previously titled The Years That Matter Most). His three previous books include How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, which was translated into 27 languages and spent more than a year on the New York Times hardcover and paperback best-seller lists.
Paul is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine; his writing has also appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, GQ, and Esquire, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times. He is a speaker on topics including education, parenting, equity, and student success. He has worked as an editor at the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Magazine and as a reporter and producer for the public-radio program “This American Life.” He was the founding editor of Open Letters, an online magazine. He lives with his wife and two sons in Austin, Texas.
You can access the videos of previous presentations by enrolling in the Promoting Student Success Canvas course in three easy steps:
1. Go to: https://weber.instructure.
2. Log in using your Wildcat username and password, (if you are not already logged in on the browser.)
3. Click the "Enroll in Course" button located on the right side of the screen.
Please peruse the materials and feel free to contribute to the dialogue about what we can do to promote student success even more or better than we already do at WSU.