Teaching Week

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 is an in-person event.

🔎 Browse the Teaching Symposium abstracts booklet here.

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.

Panelists

Taylor Joy Kirsch

• Title
  • Lecturer
• Department
  • Writing Program

Megan Colleen Moodie

• Title
  • Professor
• Department
  • Anthropology Department

Paulo Tan

• Title
  • Assistant Professor of Education: Disabilities & Mathematics
• Department
  • Education Department

Noah G Wardrip-Fruin

• Title
  • Professor
• Department
  • Computational Media

Moderator

Noriko Aso

• Title
  • Associate Professor
• Department
  • History Department

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.