Teaching Week
A Campus-Wide Celebration of Teaching
Teaching Week is a campus-wide celebration of innovative and equity-minded teaching at UC Santa Cruz. Through a series of events—including the Teaching Symposium, the Distinguished Teaching Award address, and interactive sessions on timely topics—we highlight the practices that deepen learning, foster student success, and inspire meaningful teaching.
The week brings together educators, students, and campus partners to share ideas, recognize excellence, and engage in thoughtful conversations about teaching and learning in higher education.
Upcoming Teaching Week
February 23 – 27, 2026
Teaching Symposium
Tuesday, February 24, 2:45 – 5:30 PM, Merrill Cultural Center
The symposium will showcase the work of instructors (including senate faculty, lecturers, postdocs and graduate students) presenting on a teaching innovation, activity, program, or scholarly work. Presentation modalities will include posters and short spoken presentations. This will be an in-person event.
Applications to present at the symposium encouraged from any instructor, including graduate students, postdocs, lecturers, and senate faculty.
Submit an application to showcase your work by 5 PM, Tuesday, January 20.
Campus Conversations on Access: Insights from Disability Studies
Wednesday, February 25, 3:30 – 5:00 PM, Remote/Online
This panel discussion will explore ways to foster a classroom culture of inclusivity across the divisions by addressing questions of accessibility, grounded in both Disabilities Studies and in classroom experience.
Course Reading Solutions and Challenges: A Half-Day Symposium Hosted by the University Library
Thursday, February 26, 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM, McHenry Library
Hear from UCSC faculty who re-envisioned the role of readings in their courses in order to improve student success and lower student course costs, followed by small group discussions on key topics including homework platforms, selecting materials, student insights on their reading experience, and what to do if students aren’t reading. Select sessions will be streamed. Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.
Distinguished Teaching Award Lecture
Thursday, February 26, 4:30 – 6:30 PM, Merrill Cultural Center/Online
Laurie Palmer, Professor Emerita of Art: Welcoming the Unknown Together
Join us as 2024-25 Distinguished Teaching Award recipient Laurie Palmer, Professor Emerita of Art, shares her insights on teaching. This lecture is one of the key events featured in Teaching Week 2026.
Artist, theorist, scholar, and activist, A. Laurie Palmer is Professor Emerita of Art. Since joining UCSC in 2015, she’s offered courses in sculpture, writing, forms and ideas, mixed media and project-based art, materiality of color, materiality of time, and environmental and racial justice. She has contributed significantly to establishing and guiding the Art Department’s Environmental Art and Social Practice graduate program during its first years. Before joining UCSC faculty, Palmer taught sculpture and contemporary theory at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for 18 years. Her artwork has been shown nationally and internationally. She also lectures widely on her work, and publishes writing as, and about, art in multiple formats and forums.
Past Teaching Weeks
Browse our archive of previous Teaching Weeks.
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Teaching Week 2025
Teaching Week 2025 featured the Teaching Symposium, a topical event on Experiments with AI in Teaching and Learning, and the Distinguished Teaching Award Lecture delivered by Nathan Altice, “Teaching is Like a Third Birthday.”
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Teaching Week 2024
Teaching Week 2024 included the Teaching Symposium, a topical event on Teaching in the Age of Generative AI, and the Distinguished Teaching Award Lecture delivered by Alegra Eroy-Reveles, “The Paradox of Authenticity in Teaching and Mentoring.”