Cal State San Bernardino will host an in-person and virtual forum on high-impact teaching practices from faculty across campus on April 3-4 at the university’s Santos Manuel Student Union South Events Center.

The pedagogy forum will feature a keynote address from Isabel Baca, an associate professor at the English department at the University of Texas at El Paso and author of “Bordered Writers: Latinx Identities and Literacy Practices at Hispanic-Serving Institutions.” Baca will speak from 3:30-5 p.m. on April 3.

The two-day forum, which also includes roundtable discussions, is geared toward university faculty in their teaching efforts, focusing on what works in the classroom, student feedback on teaching, what strategies have worked and how the move to virtual learning has mitigated and/or exacerbated observed learning inequities.

The event is sponsored by the CSUSB Academic Programs High Impact Practices Committee, in collaboration with the Teaching Resource Center and the Faculty Center for Excellence.

To RSVP for the forum, visit the event’s Qualtrics webpage.

Baca is in the Rhetoric and Writing Studies Program in the English department at UTEP. Her current scholarship explores key challenges that face theorists and practitioners of community writing and service-learning in writing studies.

However, Baca’s research crosses over to other disciplines since she seeks answers to the following questions: How can service-learning and writing be integrated across the curriculum? What are the potential problems with this? What are the challenges? What are the benefits? A sub-topic of her scholarship deals with second-language learners and minority students and how service-learning paves the way for multiliteracies. Her research addresses community literacy needs and how academia can help meet these needs.

Her major publication, “Service-Learning and Writing: Paving the Way for Literacy(ies) through Community Engagement,” is an edited collection that demonstrates how writing instruction and/or writing practice can complement community engagement and outreach in local, national and international contexts. Recent projects include conference presentations, workshops, chapters and journal articles on service-learning and how this teaching and learning method should be integrated and used in and outside the writing classroom. In addition, her current research explores mentoring venues and efforts for Latino/a students and other minorities in Rhetoric and Writing Studies.

Baca writes, “I founded and direct the Community Writing Partners program in the Department of English. Having recruited over twenty non-profit organizations in varying fields such as health, literacy, immigration, and advocacy, I place students in internships, senior and graduate practica, and service-learning projects. I also co-direct the Bilingual Professional Writing Certificate program and teach English-Spanish bilingual sections of Technical Writing and Workplace Writing. In addition, I teach for the fully online Technical and Professional Writing Certificate program.”

For more information, contact Thomas Girshin at tgirshin@csusb.edu.