Welcome
We're looking forward to creating the art of inclusive teaching together at STLI 2026, where you'll hear from colleagues, former students and a few guest speakers. Please join us for one session or stay for all three mornings. See session descriptions below and register for your chosen sessions at the bottom of this page.
Schedule
Tuesday, Aug. 4
Jump to: Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Register
Breakfast
- Time: 8-8:30 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Description: Join us for coffee and pastries.
- Note: No registration required.
Session 1
Building Compliant Canvas Courses
- Time: 8:30-9:30 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Facilitator: Allison Hoekstra
- Description: This workshop is designed to help faculty learn to utilize Canvas accessibility and accommodation tools to create courses that are both accessible for all learners and aligned with the new Title II accessibility requirements. Participants will learn how to identify and address common accessibility issues, improve course content, and implement accommodations within Canvas.
- Creating an accessible, Title II-compliant course supports student success while helping meet accessibility standards. As an added benefit, accessibility improvements can serve as a meaningful Faculty Performance (FPE) project.
- Please bring a laptop and a Canvas course you would like to review or update.
Unread No More: Making Student Emails Matter
- Time: 8:30-9:30 a.m.
- Location: RJF 374
- Facilitator: Ryan Nausieda
- Description: This presentation explores how thoughtful email communication can improve student engagement, reduce confusion, and help students feel more connected. We’ll look at practical ways to make emails clearer, more useful, and more likely to be read, without feeling like we’re sending messages into the void.
Session 2
Asynchronous But Not Alone: Strategies for Success in Online Teaching
- Time: 9:40-10:40 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Facilitator: Samantha Sprague and Tony VanderArk
- Description: Drawing on their work as QM Peer Reviewers and their experience as faculty members, Sam (Psychology) and Tony (English) will share some good practices for the online asynchronous learning environment. This session will begin with an overview of the top three challenges they’ve noticed while conducting online course reviews and examples of how to address each challenge. This session will also include a short workshop in which attendees will identify common challenges when teaching online and brainstorm possible solutions.
Intersectionality
- Time: 9:40-10:40 a.m.
- Location: RJF 374
- Facilitator: Debbie Ronk
- Description: To genuinely promote inclusive practices, we must first understand ourselves and our impact. This workshop will utilize a social identity wheel to guide participants in a critical examination of their own intersecting identities. We will explore how these identities shape interactions with students from diverse backgrounds, fostering an understanding of potential biases and points of connection. Participants will discuss how to leverage these personal insights to build empathy and cultivate a truly inclusive learning environment in their role as non-classroom faculty, ensuring every student feels welcome and empowered to participate.
Session 3
Building Trust between Students and Educators
- Time: 10:50-11:50 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Facilitator: Travis Steffens and Megan Downey-Gates
- Description: At community colleges, student success is deeply connected to the relationships we build in and beyond the classroom. This interactive session explores how trust functions as a critical foundation for learning, persistence, and meaningful student engagement. Participants will examine how relational trust reduces barriers to participation, increases student motivation, and creates conditions where learners feel safe to take intellectual risks. Drawing on coaching principles, motivational theory, and equity-centered practices, this session will help faculty move beyond compliance-based approaches toward strategies that foster student agency and ownership of learning. Through practical examples and guided discussion, participants will learn how to use intentional questioning, transparent communication, and trust-building interactions to better support diverse student populations.
Advisor of the Year: Empowering Student Leadership
- Time: 10:50-11:50 a.m.
- Location: RJF 374
- Facilitator: Valerie Hargraves
- Description: For those interested in becoming a student org advisor and for those already serving as a student org advisor.
- How advising a student org gives back to yourself and to the student body
- Rules and responsibilities of advisors
- A toolkit to empower student leadership and a framework of the Center for Student Life & Leadership practices for developing skills for students of any level of involvement
- Testimonials from advisors
- Hazing policies and precautions
Featured Session: Lunch and Learn
Introducing a Belonging Framework for Teaching and Student Engagement
- Time: Noon-1:00 p.m.
- Location: RJF 315 or HyFlex; join the Zoom room here
- Facilitator: Dr. Emily Spranger
- Description: This session introduces a research-based framework of belonging grounded in four components; competencies, opportunities, motivations, and perceptions (Allen et al., 2021). Participants will examine how these components inform teaching practices and interactions that cultivate belonging and support student learning, engagement, and persistence.
- Note: Lunch will be provided.
Wednesday, Aug. 5
Jump to: Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Register
Breakfast
- Time: 8-8:30 a.m.
- Location: RJF 315
- Description: Join us for a full breakfast.
- Note: No registration required
Featured Session
What I Wish I Told My Professors
- Time: 8:30-9:30 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Facilitator: GRCC alumni Henry V., Alex W., Madison B., and Eldin Causevic
- Description: Learn from the experiences of recent GRCC alumni. This panel of students will discuss their triumphs and challenges at GRCC and what they wish they had told their professors about their time in the classroom.
Session 1
Every Slide a Painting: Creating Slides that Support Learning
- Time: 9:40-10:40 a.m.
- Location: RJF 315
- Facilitator: Ian Matthews
- Description: Let's save our courses from "death by PowerPoint" with a new way to approach slides and presenting. We'll center accessibility and inclusion, create engaging visuals, and facilitate learning with slides that work for both teachers and learners.
Editing Open Textbooks with LibreNet
- Time: 9:40-10:40 a.m.
- Location: RJF 374
- Facilitator: Lauren Woolsey
- Description: GRCC is joining the LibreNet Consortium for the 2026-2027 school year to provide more resources and higher priority support for the open textbook editing platform LibreTexts. The LibreNet Consortium also provides discounts on their ADAPT and Forge homework platforms and question banks. Whether you’re an existing user of LibreTexts or curious about the possibilities, join this session to learn more about the “LibreVerse!”
Introducing the Equitable Teaching Toolkit
- Time: 9:40-10:40 a.m.
- Location: RJF 315
- Facilitator: Nora Neill and Sophia Brewer
- Description: In this session, we're inviting participants to explore practices and resources that support you in creating a more equitable and inclusive classroom spaces. As a part of the session, we'll ask for ideas and feedback to guide the work moving forward.
Session 2
Engaging and Accessible Teaching Videos
- Time: 10:50-11:50 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Facilitator: Garry Brand and Kevin Lee
- Description: This session will cover the planning and creation of shorter, engaging videos. We'll also cover how to make accessible slides and videos. Your facilitators will share examples of what drives student engagement. You'll hear from Kevin Lee, GRCC's Video Production Manager (and 2x EMMY award winner), as well as Garry Brand, Professor and Online Faculty Trainer. Please bring a laptop and/or phone to our session.
Fixing Canvas Accessibility Issues Bootcamp
- Time: 10:50-11:50 a.m.
- Location: RJF 374
- Facilitator: Lauren Woolsey
- Description: You’ve hopefully heard a lot about improved accessibility guidelines for online content by now and have maybe even attended a few informational sessions. Here’s your chance to actively work through your own Canvas courses in real time to raise your accessibility scores and help more students succeed! Be prepared with a laptop of your own and classes you want to update and edit in Canvas; we’ll work together to fix issues and share tips so that we can use this time to prepare for the Fall semester. Our time in this session will center around common issues in the Ally Accessibility Checker tool but can cover any accessibility questions you have!
Lunch and Learn
Ready, Set, Grade: Preparing Canvas for Final Grades
- Time: Noon-1 p.m.
- Location: RJF 315 or HyFlex; join the Zoom room here
- Facilitator: Justin Vogelar
- Description: Canvas-to-Online Faculty Center grade passback is coming fall semester. This upcoming option will allow faculty to pull final grades from Canvas into the Online Faculty Center instead of entering each grade manually.
- To prepare for grade passback, it is important to make sure your Canvas gradebook is calculating grades accurately before final grades are submitted. In this session, we will review how the Canvas Total grade works, how to add or verify a grading scheme, and how missing, ungraded, or excluded assignments can affect final grade accuracy.
- Faculty will leave with practical steps for reviewing their Canvas gradebook before final grades are submitted and preparing for future grade passback use.
- Note: Lunch will not be provided.
Thursday, Aug. 6
Jump to: Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Register
Breakfast
- Time: 8-8:30 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Description: Join us for coffee and pastries.
- Note: No registration required.
Session 1
Demystifying Accessibility: An Experiential Perspective
- Time: 8:30-9:30 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Facilitator: Roel Garcia, Rachel Lutwick-Deaner, Justin Vogelar
- Description: This session seeks to enrich participant’s understanding of accessible course materials. The session will begin with the lived experience of a faculty member with a vision-impairment. After hearing about educational experiences before and after the passage of the ADA, including what accommodations and tools this faculty member needs to do his work, participants will learn the why and how of accessible documents. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of creating accessible documents.
Boundaries that Stick
- Time: 8:30-9:30 a.m.
- Location: RJF 374
- Facilitator: Becca Lovell
- Description: Explore what boundaries are, why they matter, and how to recognize your own limits. Through guided reflection and discussion, you’ll learn strategies for communicating your boundaries and managing the fear of disappointing others.
Session 2
Faculty Evaluation System Updates
- Time: 9:40-10:40 a.m.
- Location: RJF 374
- Facilitator: Kelley Phillips
- Description: This session will cover new updates to the FPE and Portfolio process for the 2026-2027 year. All updates are in alignment with changes/updates to the Faculty Contract.
Motivational Syllabi
- Time: 9:40-10:40 a.m.
- Location: RJF 315 or HyFlex; join the Zoom room here
- Facilitator: Samantha Sprague, Laurell Malone, Shauntae White
- Description: Attendees will be introduced to the concept of motivational syllabi and given the opportunity to work with peers to convert their existing syllabi into motivational syllabi.
Featured Session
Panel: Optimizing Learning Through Assessment Feedback
- Time: 10:50-11:50 a.m.
- Location: RJF 375
- Facilitator: Jennifer Batten, Benjamin Mielenz, Nick Antonakis
- Description: More than just assigning a grade Assessment is an opportunity to connect and deepen learning. Tied directly to the Good Practices for Inclusive Teaching and Learning framework, this session features three GRCC colleagues sharing how they generate meaningful feedback with students. Walk away with actionable ideas to leverage feedback as a catalyst for growth.