Invitation to the CLAC 2015 Conference at Denison University

New Proposal Submission Deadline!! January 15th, 2015

The next CLAC conference will be on the beautiful Denison University Campus in Granville, OH (40 minutes east of Columbus). The conference will take place during Denison’s spring semester, on April 16 and 17, 2015, on a Thursday and Friday. (Visit the CLAC Conference Site here.)

The theme of our conference is “Engaging a Wider Community through CLAC.” It focuses on building relationships to serve an expanded population. At this, our 9th conference, CLAC is reflecting on past achievements and planning future directions. Currently there is increased national attention on and support for developing international and cross-cultural perspectives in the curriculum. Programs like 100K Strong in the Americas and Generation Study Abroad create even more opportunities to spotlight the role of CLAC principles/practices in shaping the next “generation of leaders who can reach across borders” whether physical, linguistic, cultural, or curricular. Please visit the CLAC conference website to learn more.

We have already been able to attract two excellent keynote speakers for the conference: Rosemary Feal, Executive Director of the MLA, and Adam Weinberg, Denison’s new president (since 2013).

Call for Proposals: You can find the CfP here with a link to the online submission form. The deadline for the calls is December 1st, 2014. Or scroll down to see the entire CfP.

For more information on past CLAC conferences and the CLAC Consortium in general, please visit the consortium website.

Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum (CLAC)

Engaging a Wider Community through CLAC

April 16-17, 2015

In collaboration with: Auburn University, Baldwin Wallace University, Binghamton University, Drake University, Gettysburg College, Oberlin College, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Skidmore College, The University of Iowa, The University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill, University of Richmond, and Wittenberg College

Engaging a Wider Community through CLAC

Our conference is of interest to both seasoned CLAC practitioners and those in the process of implementing or developing CLAC programs at their institutions. We seek a dialogue for sharing ideas and best practices in our evolving and unique field of education for global citizens. We welcome participation from the broad array of stakeholders promoting international education as a transformational model for learning, teaching and global engagement. Past participants at our conference have included academic teaching faculty and scholars, student affairs professionals, international educators, community representatives, government officials, and teachers. CLAC 2015 will provide an opportunity for more extended discussions of ways in which we can expand and advance the CLAC movement.

What is CLAC:

The CLAC movement intends to make global competence a reality for students and to create alliances among educators to share practices and methods for incorporating an international dimension in curricula, and, more generally, to achieve internationalization goals. General principles of CLAC include:

A focus on communication and content;

• An emphasis on developing meaningful content-focused language use outside traditional language classes;
• An approach to language use and cross-cultural skills as a means for the achievement of global intellectual synthesis, in which students learn to combine and interpret knowledge produced in other languages and in other cultures.

Within this large framework, CLAC can take many forms, depending on specific content and curricular goals within a discipline or institution. For more information on CLAC, visit the CLAC Consortium website: http://clacconsortium.org/

 Call for Proposals CLAC 2015

We invite proposals for papers (30 min presentation, including 10 min Q&A) or panels (presentation for 90 min total, including 30 min Q&A) or poster presentations on any issue relating to CLAC, although the following topics are of particular interest:

• Inter-institutional CLAC collaborations
• Global Course Connections and CLAC
• Experiential learning and CLAC
• The role of CLAC in the Community College
• CLAC and Critical Thinking
• CLAC and Pathway Programs
• Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and CLAC
• Promoting CLAC to stakeholders
• Cross-disciplinary teaching styles and pedagogical approaches
• Interconnections with Study Abroad, Service Learning, International Students
• Community Connections
• Experiential and Community Engagement
• Professional development opportunities for CLAC practitioners (mentor relationships)
• Assessment

Proposal Information

Deadline for Proposal Submissions: January 15th, 2015

Proposals should be submitted online. All proposals must include:

1. Type: Presentation (30 minutes, including 10 minutes for open discussion), Panel (90 minutes, including at least two separate papers and at least 30 minutes for questions and comments from the audience), or Poster
2. Title (of your paper, panel, or poster)
3. Brief Description (up to 75 words for paper, up to 200 words for panel, up to 100 words for poster)
4. Relationship to Conference Themes (how your proposal relates to the conference themes, up to 50 words per paper or poster)
5. Target Audience(s) (including what the audience(s) can expect to “take away” from your presentation, up to 50 words per paper or poster)
6. An abstract of your paper (up to 200 words), panel (up to 850 words) or poster (up to 250 words), clearly indicating what each presenter, if more than one, will contribute
7. A list of technical needs. Note: Conference organizers will provide a data projector and screen for all presentations. Presenters are asked to bring their own laptop computers.
8. Name(s) of Presenter(s) (including, as appropriate, specification of their roles, contact information for each; titles and affiliations, email addresses, telephone and fax numbers)
9. Brief biographical sketch (50-75 words) for each participant

Note: The conference organizers welcome and encourage proposals for posters and for creative presentations that do not take the form of a traditional paper or panel. This might include videos, examples of CLAC assignments and exercises, or testimonials from student and faculty CLAC participants. Prospective presenters are particularly encouraged to consider a poster format because of the opportunity they provide for extended discussion and networking. For proposals of this variety, please submit the same information listed above.

To submit your proposal online: CLAC 2015 Call for Proposals Submission Form

 For questions please contact Dr. Gabriele Dillmann at Denison University: Dillmann@denison.edu