Register now to attend the 2026 Provost’s Summit: Cultivating Kindness and Belonging in Higher Education on February 5 and 6, 2026.
REGISTER HERE
This virtual summit is free of charge and will offer two keynote sessions led by nationally recognized authors and higher education educators.
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.
Cate’s keynote, The Pedagogy of Kindness, will explore three tenets of compassionate teaching and how those in higher education can assemble a kind approach to pedagogy that meets the needs of our students and ourselves in a time of great change.
José Antonio Bowen, Ph.D. 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). 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.
José’s keynote, Educating Humans to Thrive in an AI World, will address how those in higher education might (or might not) use AI to support human thriving as we maintain the best of our tradition while rethinking curriculum for a new world.
Visit the summit webpage for up-to-date information.
Questions? Email strategiclrn@bsu.edu