UT System Webinar Series 2025-2026
Faculty, teaching assistants, and staff across the UT System are invited to a webinar series entitled Educating for Impact: Building World-Ready Students. Hosted by the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers in collaboration with the UT System Faculty Developers, the series explores the value of the core curriculum and its role in supporting student learning and adaptability.
The remaining sessions for this academic year will be held on the second Tuesday of March and April from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Presenters include Academy fellows along with other faculty leaders from UT System campuses. Register here.
Sessions highlight how the core curriculum fosters cultural and social capital, analytical thinking, global citizenship, and interdisciplinary awareness—skills that prepare graduates to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing workplace and society.
Faculty-led conversations also showcase innovative practices in student partnership, productive struggle in the age of AI, and new ways of making learning visible and durable. Together, these sessions affirm the power of higher education to future-proof our students while deepening the impact of teaching and learning.
Educating for Impact: Building World-Ready Students (UT System Series 2025-26) | Recordings
Thursday, March 12, 1 pm
Productive Struggling, Critical Thinking, and AI
In an era when instant answers are readily available, opportunities for productive struggle and critical thinking can be diminished. This session, led by Beth Fleener and Peggy Semingson from UT Arlington, examines productive struggle as a learning process that supports perseverance, resilience, and deeper learning. The discussion will address stages of cognitive development, the role of AI in learning, and teaching strategies that encourage critical thinking and long-term retention across disciplines.
Thursday, April 9, 1 pm
Mapping What Matters: Making Student Learning Visible Beyond the Gradebook
How can universities demonstrate the real-world value of higher education while honoring faculty autonomy and disciplinary depth? This session explores a pilot Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) that helps students articulate durable skills like critical thinking and ethical reasoning developed in coursework. Morgan Ginther, Molly Hatcher, and Elon Lang from UT Austin will share a four-step process for competence mapping, strategies for engaging faculty and departments, and lessons learned about aligning course-level competences with broader institutional goals. Discussion will center on how this work can be adapted to different institutional contexts to advance student success, faculty sense of purpose, and public trust in higher education.
