NEXT CONFERENCE: MAY 22-27, 2026
NEXT CONFERENCE: MAY 22-27, 2026
We’re doing teaching conferences differently.
How? By bringing together faculty, graduate student instructors, undergraduate students, and other education professionals who are devoted to inspirational teaching and learning. By taking everyone away from campus, from their phones, from offices, and from professional obligations. By surrounding them with forests, water, and wildlife. By offering them full days of workshop activities exploring teaching through highly interactive large and small group presentations, discussion groups, and hands-on experiential sessions.
CICT is five days of programming that inspires college educators to inspire learners. The support for teaching and learning at CICT comes from research, personal experience, and collaborative thinking. The camp setting is deliberately informal, with no paid presenters and no distinction by academic rank. Most activities occur in small groups, facilitating learning, building trust, and fostering networking. Participants are encouraged to spend time in nature during the conference, and there is time set aside for reflection on teaching and for professional rejuvenation.
CICT is sponsored by the Wakonse Foundation, whose mission is to support, promote, and share the excitement and satisfaction of teaching– to inspire students and ourselves.
What is the Conference on Inspiring College Teaching?
Not just informative but transformative
Longtime participants and newcomers alike report that sharing strategies, challenges, and innovations with colleagues rekindles their passion and replenishes their emotional reserves for teaching.
Participants return to their home institutions to share what they’ve learned with their peers. The insights they gain at the conference not only transform their own classrooms but also ripple out to enhance their colleagues' teaching, reshaping students' experiences across the university.
Who attends the CICT?
CICT is for new and experienced faculty, graduate student instructors, administrators, and staff who work with college students. Concurrent with the teaching conference is an undergraduate leadership conference that periodically brings educators and students together to share ideas about effective and inspiring education.
Conference Programming
Everyone who attends this conference takes an active role in the presentations and conversations about teaching and learning. There are five ways of presenting at this conference, and most participants engage in two or more of them.
Community Forums
These are plenary sessions in which one person or a panel presents a topic of interest or facilitates an activity for all participants. These typically last 45 to 60 minutes.
1
Concurrent Sessions
In concurrent sessions, one person or a panel gives a workshop or demonstration on a given topic. Or two or three participants present more traditional papers or studies on a topic and then facilitate discussion afterward. These sessions typically last about 45 minutes.
2
Concurrent Discussions
Concurrent discussions are not formal presentations. Rather, they are a time for people to come together to talk about issues they have in their own teaching or other aspects of professional life. These are great opportunities to brainstorm solutions that may be presented in later concurrent sessions. Concurrent discussions generally last about 45 minutes.
3
Activity Sessions
In activity sessions, a participant or group uses their personal or professional talents to organize and host an activity for other participants, such as ceramics, yoga, geocaching, cemetery tour, dune hike, meditation, musical performance or lesson, printmaking, board games, camp trail run, beach walk, etc. The duration of activity sessions can be extremely flexible and can be arranged for early morning, afternoon, or evening activity times.
4
Dialogue Groups
All conference participants belong to a dialogue group that meets regularly throughout the conference to reflect on challenges and strategies for conquering them. These are guided by two dialogue group facilitators who have attended the conference previously and who train before the conference to support participants.
5
Wondering what life at CICT looks like?
