Own Your Future: Conference on Teaching

Your Future in Teaching: The Classroom and Beyond (Encore Edition) 

The 2025 Own Your Future Conference offers an encore of last year’s thought-provoking theme, Your Future in Teaching: The Classroom and Beyond. This year’s event will deepen last year’s conversation on how to take your teaching beyond the traditional classroom. Whether you are a mentor or supervisor to students, a learner, designer of educational resources, or dreamer of ways to connect with learners in the broader community, your teaching likely reaches beyond the walls – or course site – of your classroom.

We are pleased to host a new panel of speakers from across diverse disciplines to share their insights and practical strategies for education. Designed specifically for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, this conference is an opportunity to come together with other educators, working in different roles and contexts, to connect and think about how your teaching prepares you for your future both within and beyond the classroom.

The Own Your Future: Conference on Teaching is a half-day virtual event. Participants are invited to join one or more conference sessions to enhance skill areas related to teaching, set personal goals for growth as instructors, and connect teaching experiences to their overall professional development as graduate students.

Future Prof Credit Information: Each conference session will offer participants the opportunity to complete a short Future Prof assignment. Upon satisfactory completion of each of these assignments, in combination with attendance at the corresponding conference session, you may be awarded up to three (3) Future Prof credits total for the Conference.

2025 Synchronous Conference Schedule

9:00am to 10:20am - GenAI UnPanel: Critical Issues in GenAI

In this semi-structured session, we will have provocateurs rather than panelists. Each provocateur will present a short introduction to a critical issue related to Generative AI's impact on education. Following each presentation, they will provide a provocation – a bold claim designed to spark critical reflection and debate. Session attendees will be invited to respond to the provocation in small group discussions. At the end of the session, we will regroup and briefly discuss the key themes and tensions that emerged in the small group discussions.

10:20am to 10:30am - Break

10:30am to 11:20am - Student Panel on Taking Teaching Beyond the Classroom

In this curated panel, current Western graduate students and postdocs showcase innovative ways they have translated their teaching experiences in teaching and learning spaces beyond the traditional classroom. They will also provide some reflections and considerations for those interested in doing the same.

11:20am to 11:30am - Break

11:30am to 12:20pm - Professional Panel on Interuniversity and Transnational Teaching Experiences: Lessons Learned From A Western University Hosted Summer School

Join us for a panel discussion featuring invited experts who will share their experiences running a summer school on Data Information Science for young professionals. Led by Dr. Isola Ajiferuke, Associate Dean of Research in FIMS, the panel features Evans Batung, Ph.D Candidate in the Department of Geography, and Dr. Rukayat Adeola Somoye, from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. The panelists will share their pedagogical considerations, insights and teaching perspectives from their 2024 summer school. Attendees are invited to reflect on the ways in which they could adopt some of the strategies to inform the design of their own future initiatives.

12:20 GIFT Award and Closing Remarks