{"id":4515,"date":"2018-04-09T09:55:25","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T15:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/?p=4515"},"modified":"2020-06-26T10:31:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T16:31:27","slug":"the-conference-career-goldmine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/online.suny.edu\/onlineteaching\/2018\/04\/09\/the-conference-career-goldmine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Conference “Career Goldmine”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtually every major turning point of my career has hinged on some conference I made myself attend.<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"
Dr. Barbara Oakley, guest author and keynote speaker for SUNY CIT 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE; Fellow, Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reflecting back, I\u2019m surprised to realize how many of my major career achievements have arisen out of conferences I\u2019ve attended.<\/p>\n

In my very first semester as a college professor, for example, I attended an engineering education conference, where I happened to pass by a workshop on \u201cstudent centered learning.\u201d That\u2019s a silly idea!<\/em> I remember thinking. After all, weren\u2019t college professors supposed share their own hard-earned knowledge, instead of exposing the embarrassingly sparse knowledge of the students they were there to teach?<\/p>\n

But the workshop was about to begin, and for whatever reason, I drifted in. Over the next few hours, workshop leaders Richard Felder and Rebecca Brent shifted the entire trajectory of my teaching. Over the years, I\u2019ve won my university\u2019s top teaching award and a number of national teaching awards\u2014and I can safely say it all grows from the ideas I learned in that one conference workshop.<\/p>\n

“A good conference is like an immersion experience\u2014it improves your knowledge-base of the \u201clanguage\u201d no matter what level you\u2019re at.”<\/em><\/h4>\n

Conferences do more than just give you the chance to hear and participate in great presentations and workshops\u2014they also give you rare opportunities to meet and ask questions of up-and-coming or influential researchers and speakers. A good conference is like an immersion experience\u2014it improves your knowledge-base of the \u201clanguage\u201d no matter what level you\u2019re at. I\u2019ve been able to keep at the forefront of my multi-disciplinary work because I\u2019m able to attend and speak at conferences in a wide variety of fields. Many chance encounters for me at conferences have led to new friendships and collaborations, and opened many opportunities to work with and visit researchers from around the world.<\/p>\n

Six years ago, for example, I was invited to speak for the National Academy of Sciences at their Sackler Auditorium Colloquium. I prepared intensely for it\u2014it was a controversial topic, and I didn\u2019t want to screw up. (I\u2019m occasionally surprised at how a presenter will treat a conference presentation as if it were a last-minute class presentation; winging things together at the last moment. Great career opportunities are lost this way. But that\u2019s the subject of another essay\u2026)<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the moderator for my talk was leading neuroscientist Terrence Sejnowski. He liked what I had to say, leading to a friendship that led in turn to our becoming co-instructors in what has become the world\u2019s largest massive open online course, Learning How to Learn<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

There have been many such fortuitous meetings at conferences for me over the years. In fact, several weeks ago, I was invited to speak at a popular conference that featured inspirational talks about the future. I couldn\u2019t help feeling a bit out of sorts because it wasn\u2019t the usual type of conference I attend. And I only had twenty minutes for the presentation\u2014could I really present something that the audience could sink their teeth into? (My assigned topic, incidentally, was \u201cthe future of education\u201d\u2014a potential quagmire of obvious platitudes.)<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes or no, popular conference or no, I put a lot of thought and preparation into my presentation, trying to make it witty, insightful, and thought-provoking, with lots of new ideas and discussion of a practical, high impact project currently in progress. To my surprise, a manager of one of the world\u2019s leading philanthropic institutions came up afterwards and said, \u201clet\u2019s talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coming up soon is the magnificently planned SUNY Conference on Instruction and Technology<\/a>, May 22-25, 2018. I\u2019ll be there, along with a host of great researchers and presenters. Why not plan to attend? Who knows the new directions that could come for you!<\/p>\n

SUNY CIT is pleased to host Dr. Oakley for CIT 2018. Learn more about Dr. Oakley and her CIT workshop here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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