New England Faculty Development Consortium 

NEFDC Fall 2020 Virtual Conference:

Relationship Rich Experiences in Person and Online

OCTOBER 30, 2020

Dear NEFDC Colleagues,

After serious consideration and an honest assessment of the NEFDC Board’s ability to pull off a full conference this fall as we are all at full tilt in our roles (as you are in yours), we have reconfigured our plans to be more manageable and affordable. We looked into online conference vendors and their availability and cost are prohibitive. We think you will like our new plan!

The New Plan

We will retain the fall conference theme, and our guest speaker, Dr. Peter Felten, will deliver his keynote address “Relationships Matter: Moving relationship-rich experiences to the center of teaching and learning.” We will follow with Birds of a Feather sessions and presentations by last year’s recipients of the NEFDC SoTL Awards. And we will end with Dr. Felten’s interactive workshop “Learning and Relationships: Practical Strategies.” The new schedule and registration link will be available soon on the NEFDC website conference page. We will begin at 9:45am and end by 2:00pm. Zoom links will be available one week before the conference.

Free Registration

As you may recall, when we had to cancel the spring conference, we extended all current members renewed membership at no cost for 2020-2021. Because we know that everyone has had to further tighten their budgets this year, we would like to offer current members free registration to the fall mini-conference! We will make the same offer of free registration to institutions that become members for 2020-2021. We will require registration so that we know what the numbers are.

We also want to let you know that The Exchange Summer/Fall 2020 is now up on our website! Thank you to Lori Rosenthal, NEFDC editor of the Exchange, for publishing it!

We hope you are all in good health and that you are feeling ready for the coming weeks at your institutions. We look forward to seeing you online on October 30th.

Take good care,

The NEFDC Board

If you have any questions, please contact Sharon McManus at smcmanus@necc.mass.edu.