CHARISM Conference Schedule

March 22 

1:15 pm – 1:45 pm 

“From AI Disclosure to Formation: Using Student AI-Use Documentation as Charism-Centered Assessment in Catholic Higher Education,” 

This presentation explores how documenting and discussing students’ use of generative AI can support charism-cenred assessment in Catholic higher education. It offers practical strategies for evaluating students’ critical thinking, ethical judgment, discernment, and responsible authorship while upholding Catholic educational values. Rather than focusing solely on AI policies and academic integrity, the session presents AI as an opportunity to foster meaningful learning, accountability, and student formation. 

Presenter: Dr. Arthur E. Hernandez, UIW 

1:15 pm – 1:45 pm 

CHARISM & International Education through the Lewis Center Fellowship Program 

The Lewis Center presentation focuses on the development of the infrastructure and learning objectives for the undergraduate research fellowship: an intensive mentoring experience that provides undergraduates a chance to do higher-level research, writing, and policy advocacy on issues related to the Americas. The presentation also lays out a roadmap for extending the fellowship to undergraduates at the CHARISM universities. 

Presenter: Dr. Richard Pineda 

1:50 pm – 2:20 pm

Forming Scientists as Stewards of Creation: Integrating CUREs in Biology through Catholic Intellectual Tradition and Laudato Si '

This presentation explores how Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs), including Tiny Earth and SEA-PHAGES at the University of the Incarnate Word, engage students in authentic scientific discovery. By combining hands-on microbiology research with ethical reflection, environmental stewardship, and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, these programs strengthen scientific skills, encourage student persistence, and promote care for our common home. The session also shares practical approaches for implementing CUREs and expanding collaborative, mission-centered research opportunities.

Presenter: Dr. Ana Vallor

2:40 pm – 3:10 pm

Stuff That (mostly) Works for Underprepared Students: Do you have more and more students underprepared for your courses . . . or for college?

 Come join this informal “group therapy” to organize what we see (and our headaches!) and re-discover clues on how to bridge those gaps – with small, efficient adjustments.

Presenter: Dr. Glenn James, UIW

2:40 pm – 3:10 pm 

Pedagogy of Belonging and Vocation 

This presentation introduces a teaching model developed by UIW philosophy faculty that integrates belonging and vocation into the curriculum. Inspired by Pope Francis, the model promotes classroom communities built on hospitality, cooperation, and solidarity while encouraging students to reflect on their purpose and vocation. The workshop shares practical experiences and invites participants to consider how their teaching practices support students’ deeper human needs and aspirations. 

Presenters: Dr. Haley Burke; Dr. Chris Edelman; Dr. Paul Lewis, University of the Incarnate Word 

Primary Presenter: Dr. Paul Lewis 

3:15 pm – 3:45 pm 

“Teach Me, I Dare You…”: Building a Coordinated Engagement Ecosystem for Gateway Mathematics 

This workshop shares UIW’s College Algebra pilot, which combined classroom instruction, peer mentoring, tutoring, and advising to improve student engagement and persistence. Participants will explore practical strategies, faculty development initiatives, and coordinated support systems that promote early intervention, effective learning habits, and student success while reflecting Catholic educational values of community and holistic student formation. 

Presenter: Dr. Suleyman Tek 

3:15 pm – 3:45 pm 

Support Undergraduate Reading: Strategies for Across the Disciplines, First Year to Graduate 

Presenter: Dr. Ann David, University of the Incarnate Word 

March 23 

9:55 am – 10:25 am 

Race, Migration, and Identity in Mediterranean Europe: Our experience Developing a New Study Abroad Curricular Model 

This presentation discusses developing and teaching our new University of Mount Saint Vincent study abroad program to Rome, Montpellier, and Valencia. The new program reimagines the study abroad experience to traditional European destinations through the creation of a non-traditional curriculum which focuses on the cross-cultural themes of race and racism, immigration, multiculturalism and national identity in Mediterranean Europe. The six-credit program consists of two courses: the first is a pre-departure course that employs an interdisciplinary lens to explore the issues of race, migration, and identity today which is contextualized within the wider Mediterranean world as an historically in-between space for diverse peoples, cultures, and religions. The second course provides an immersive study abroad experience in which, in addition to language learning, students engage directly with the program themes through the exploration of each city’s diverse cultural heritage in its art, architecture, and history along with site visits to centers, museums, and non-profit organizations that assist migrants and refugees. The two presenters will share their experiences developing and teaching the program in the hope that it will serve as a useful model to assist other programs as they search for innovative ways to provide meaningful study abroad opportunities to our students. 

 Presenters: David Aliano, PhD and Severine Rebourcet, PhD 

Primary Presenter: Dr. David Aliano 

9:55 am – 10:25 am 

Teaching Climate Change: Addressing Hopelessness and Despair 

This presentation explores how climate change education can foster hope, resilience, and meaningful action, inspired by Pope Leo XIV’s teachings and Catholic social thought. Through a reflective classroom exercise, students express their feelings, thoughts, needs, and hopes about climate change, creating space for open dialogue and emotional connection while encouraging collective responsibility and environmental stewardship. 

Presenter: Dr. Julie Miller, University of the Incarnate Word 

10:30 am – 11:00 am  

Scared Spaces: Using Digital Humanities to Connect Communities and Universities 

This presentation highlights Sacred Spaces, a digital humanities project at Dominican University that creates interactive virtual tours of historic and endangered religious sites in Chicago. It explores how collaboration among universities and community organizations can preserve cultural heritage, share digital skills, and develop innovative educational projects across the CHARISM Alliance. 

Presenter: Dr. Michael Raybourne, Dominican University 

10:30 am – 11:00 am  

AI as Assistant and Data Analyst: Cultivating and Examining AI Resilience in Capstone Writing 

As Generative AI reshapes higher education, educators must move beyond policing tools to cultivating "AI-Resilience" (Corbin et al., 2025). This session presents a dual-layered case study from a capstone research course where students operationalized an "AI as Assistant" model. We examine how this intervention shifted student perceptions of self-efficacy and critical evaluation in academic writing. However, evaluating the complex process of student-AI interaction generates massive amounts of qualitative data. To address this, we present a novel, applicable methodological innovation: a human-in-the-loop AI-assisted qualitative research workflow. We demonstrate how we utilized AI to perform stage-by-stage thematic analysis on student logs and pre/post survey. By generating Baseline, Process, and Outcome codebooks, we successfully mapped the cognitive journey of students. Attendees will leave with a framework for integrating AI into writing assignments and a specific, prompt-engineered workflow for analyzing qualitative student data efficiently.  

 Presenters: Dr. Mica Rutschke and Dr. Ripsimé Bledsoe, University of the Incarnate Word 

11:10 am – 11:40 am 

Growing AI-Ready Faculty Through Peer-Led Professional Development 

In a fragmented and divided world, where violence is increasing both in our own country and abroad, our universities and students face major challenges: deep ideological polarization, barriers in global mobility, and severe mental health strain. These pressures threathen academic freedom, cross-border research, and student well-being. Presurres such as these can also threathen the purpose for and the vision of the university, if we allow them. But history has shown us that the pressures that have confronted our universities over the course of this century have not led to our destruction but to the construction of a stronger edifice based on the values of human dignity and the common good. As Pope Leo XIV and St. John Henry Newman have stated in their various writings, we educate ourselves so that we can transform our reality. This paper will be presented in three parts. Part I will explain briefly the pressures have been challenges for our universities and have caused some changes. Part II will open a dialogue with John Henry Newman's vision of the Christian university in the 1800s and Pope Leo XIV's vision of the Christian university for the 21st century. Finally, Part III will suggest some ways that our universities can work together to keep (1) a liberal arts focus, (2) an integral anthropological vision, and (3) a social justice approach which is making the reign of God possible for all, especially the poor and marginalized. Hopefully, this paper will lead to some critical thinking and creative work together. No, some of the pressures will still be there, but we have new knowledge to explore and new eyes to see other visions.  

Presenter: Dr. Lucretia M. Fraga, University of the Incarnate Word 

11:10 am – 11:40 am 

Information Is Not Formation: Storytelling and Human(e) Way of Knowing 

What does it mean to know? A lecture can convey a professor’s knowledge. A paper can show that a student has learned a field’s conventions. Neither, by itself, ensures that knowledge has become understanding—or that it has changed how someone sees, interprets, or participates in the world.  When higher education positions students primarily as recipients of information, it leaves little room for formation—the shaping of how a person comes to know, not only what they know—through experience, culture, relationships, reflection, and creation. Generative AI makes this question urgent. Its exceptional speed and capacity to retrieve information and produce plausible academic prose can deepen an older tendency: what is easily produced and evaluated can begin to look like knowledge itself. Story moves differently. It asks not for recitation, but participation. It brings what we know into relationship with who we are, with one another, and with the space between us where meaning is made. Expanding whose knowledge counts—and how it may be expressed—is central to our institutions’ shared commitment to human dignity, social justice, and the formation of a more humane world. This interactive workshop uses storytelling as an entry into multimodal practices of knowledge creation: not a retreat from scholarship, but a rigorous and human(e) process of shared meaning-making. Participants will practice these approaches in their own inquiry and scholarship, and explore them as legitimate ways to demonstrate mastery.  

Presenter: Dr. Katie Clauen, Dominican University