Learn from Inspiring Keynotes
Meet Catherine (Cate) Denial
Catherine (Cate) Denial, Ph.D. is the Bright Distinguished Professor of American History and Director of the Bright Institute at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. A winner of the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award, Cate has served as a member of the Educational Advisory Committee of the Digital Library of America, as a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, and as a Learned Scholar for the National Historic Landmarks division of the National Park Service. Cate currently sits on the board of Commonplace: A Journal of Early American Life. She has held an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellowship from the American Philosophical Society, and she is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society.
From 2001 to 2011 Cate served as the Lead Historian for Bringing History Home, a professional development program for K-12 educators funded by $3m from the U.S. Department of Education. Cate’s new book, A Pedagogy of Kindness argues that higher education needs to get aggressively and determinedly kind. A Pedagogy of Kindness is about attending to justice, believing people, and believing in people. It’s a transformational discipline.
As creator and director of the Bright Institute at Knox College, Cate oversees a program which supports 13 faculty from liberal arts schools across the United States in their teaching and research for three years, while providing them with $10,500 in research funds and convening an annual summer seminar. From 2022 to 2023, she was PI on a $150,000 grant awarded to Knox College by the Mellon Foundation, bringing together thirty-six participants from across higher education in the United States to explore “Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care in the Academy After COVID-19.” Cate is also a pedagogical consultant who works with individuals, departments, and institutions in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, and Australia.
Meet Jose Antonio Bowen
José Antonio Bowen has been leading innovation and change for over 40 years at Stanford, Georgetown, and the University of Southampton (UK), then as a dean at Miami University and SMU and as President of Goucher College (voted a Top 10 Most Innovative College under his leadership). He now runs Bowen Innovation Group L.L.C., and does innovation, pedagogy and D&I consulting and training in both higher education and for Fortune 500 companies including AT&T, Chevron, Pfizer, Toyota, and Walmart.
Bowen has long been a pioneer in education, classroom design and technology, featured in The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Newsweek, PBS News Hour, and on NPR. He was given a Stanford Centennial Award for Undergraduate Teaching in 1990 and he has presented keynotes and workshops at more than 400 campuses and conferences in 46 states and 20 countries around the world.
His books on teaching include Teaching Naked (2012) winner of the Ness Award for Best Book on HigherEducation from the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the sequel, Teaching Naked Techniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes with C. Edward Watson (2017) and Teaching Change: How to Develop Independent Thinkers using Relationships, Resilience and Reflection (2021, Johns Hopkins University Press). His latest book with C. Edward Watson is Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (2024, Johns Hopkins University Press).
In 2018 he received the Ernest L. Boyer Award (for significant contributions to American higher education) from the New American Colleges and Universities. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in England, is currently a Senior Fellow at the Association of American of Colleges and Universities.