support international, multi-institutional and multidisciplinary research on focused topics in engaged learning. Each seminar brings together 20 to 24 scholars from higher education institutions around the world who collaborate over two academic years, including three summer meetings at Elon. Led by a team of scholars with expertise in the seminar topic, participants work together in smaller research teams to develop collaborative studies designed to advance research on engaged learning that can be applied across institutional and disciplinary contexts. Elon students, serving as , also contribute to the leadership of the seminars and collaborate with participants throughout the research process.

The three summer meetings guide participants through the research process. During the first meeting, participants form smaller research teams, develop research questions and create plans for collecting data during the following academic year. At the second meeting, teams return to Elon with their data and focus on analysis and next steps. The third and final meeting centers on sharing findings at CEL’s annual  and developing plans to circulate the research more broadly. This summer offered a snapshot of that full process, with one seminar at each stage.

First, in late June, participants in  returned to Elon for their third and final summer meeting. Research teams shared findings from their multi-institutional studies and continued developing plans for publications and other forms of going public with their research. The seminar was led by Caroline Ketcham, associate dean for STEAM and operations for Elon College, the College of Arts & Sciences, and professor of exercise science; Kira Campagna ‘26; Ben Krasnow ‘27; Kaz Kelly ‘27; and Jessie L. Moore, Director of CEL and Professor of English: Professional Writing & Rhetoric.

The seminar’s focus also shaped the theme of this year’s Conference on Engaged Learning, which welcomes members of the Elon community and educators from other institutions. Seminar participants presented their research throughout the conference, and the  delivered the . On the final day,  employee experience and culture expert, delivered a  focused on cognitive equity and designing learning environments that recognize and support different ways of thinking, processing, and contributing.

Then, in early July, CEL welcomed participants in  for their first summer meeting. Participants formed research teams, developed questions about generative AI and engaged learning, and designed plans for collecting data during the coming academic year. The 2026-2028 research seminar is led by Amanda Sturgill, associate professor of journalism; Aaron Trocki, associate professor of mathematics; Matthew Cornick ‘29, Mariama Kindie Jalloh ‘28; and Chiebuka Tor ‘28.

Finally, in mid-July, participants in returned to Elon for their second summer meeting. Having collected data during the previous academic year, teams spent their week together analyzing their findings and developing plans for the next stages of their research. The 2025-2027 research seminar is led by Ashley J. Holmes, associate vice provost for �þ��� and learning at Oregon State University, and author of “; Susan Hrach, a professional coach and author of Minding Bodies; Lauren Kearns, Maude Sharpe Powell Professor and professor of dance; Phillip Motley, professor of communication design and director, of graduate programs for the School of Communications; Sanai Crosby ‘28; and Amelia Weaver ‘28.

The work of the Research Seminars continues throughout the academic year as participants return to their home institutions, collect and analyze data, collaborate virtually, and work toward sharing their findings with the broader higher education community.

Interested in joining a future CEL Research Seminar? Applications for the next research seminar will open later this fall. Learn more about past, current and future seminars and conferences visit.

“We’re excited to launch Elon Collect because it gives us a shared digital home for the intellectual and cultural life of the university,” states Dean & University Librarian of Carol Grotnes Belk Library Brian Mathews. “It will preserve important pieces of Elon’s institutional history while also providing lasting access to faculty and student scholarship, creative work, research, reports, �þ��� materials and other significant contributions. In that sense, it is both an archive of where Elon has been and an infrastructure for where we are going.”

What is Elon Collect?

Elon Collect is an institutional repository, which is a digital system that is used to disseminate scholarly works created at a single institution. However, Elon Collect’s scope expands more broadly, allowing data and archival materials to stand in conversation with scholarship.

Elon Collect is home to three distinct overarching collections: Elon Works, Elon Data, and University Archives & Special Collections.

• Elon Works is a centralized hub to showcase the research, scholarly, creative and �þ���-focused work created across campus.
• Elon Data is home to data created and collected by students, faculty and staff.
• University Archives & Special Collections is the new location for curated images, documents, and ephemera from Elon, church, and local history from Belk Library’s .

Anyone currently associated with �þ��� is eligible to deposit works into the Elon Works and Elon Data collections to enhance reach and visibility, both around campus and worldwide.

Elon Collect worked with three campus partners–the , the , and the Digital and Spatial Humanities Consortium–to showcase examples of faculty and staff work and ensure a smooth campus launch on Aug. 14. Additionally, posters from the have been included to provide examples of how student work can be shared.

What are the benefits & features of Elon Collect?

“Elon Collect will empower faculty, staff, and students to better disseminate and promote their work, exercise their rights as authors, and contribute to conversations in research, creative practice, and �þ��� and learning,” said Coordinator of Research and Publishing and Associate Librarian Jesse Akman. “Moreover, Elon Collect will simplify grant compliance, improve discoverability for Elon journals and publications, and strengthen internal communications and institutional memory.”

One of the core goals of Elon Collect is to provide wider access to works created on Elon’s campus. With Google Scholar indexing, any work deposited can be discovered by researchers worldwide. Through Creative Commons license options, Elon creators can more precisely describe how others may use their work. However, for those who may not want their work to be available worldwide, Elon Collect also provides other access options, including embargos to make public at a later date or internal access to only Elon users.

The system can also mint DOIs, or digital object identifiers, to provide a persistent identifier that acts as a stable, permanent link back to the work. DOIs help to standardize citations, especially for users outside of Elon.

Elon Collect also provides Author Profiles, a centralized portfolio for all works in the repository alongside research interests and external publications. The Author Profiles provide comparative statistics for every work connected to the profile owner, making it even easier to find and share the impact of your work.

“As we enter the final years of Boldly Elon and consider what it means to “Rise,” Elon Collect will help position the university for a future where our authors’ works are preserved and accessible, their rights are protected, and our campus is more enmeshed in scholarly communications than ever before,” said Akman.

What can I submit to Elon Collect?

Elon Collect accepts a variety of deposits from current faculty, staff and students.

“Elon Collect expands beyond the scope of a traditional institutional repository to capture the full breadth of work being created on campus today,” said Emma Powell, archivist and assistant librarian and manager of Elon Collect. “Historically, the �þ��� Archives and Special Collections has only collected �þ��� honors theses. This is an exciting opportunity to diversify the works we share.”

Works that can be deposited include, but are not limited to:

• �þ���-based publications—serial outputs created and published by campus centers like journals or podcast series
• Conference-based works—works like posters or presentations created for or presented at a disciplinary conference
• Creative works—outputs from those working/studying in creative fields like artwork, choreography, creative writing, filmmaking and original music compositions
• Data, software and code
• Grey literature—documents created to be shared but not be published through traditional means like reports and white papers
• Open publications—works that have been formally published like book chapters and journal articles, and have Open Access (OA) or self-archiving (Green OA) options
• Student works—works completed solely by students that have original writing or research and should be shared beyond the classroom like theses and capstones or SURF and SURE posters and presentations
• Teaching and learning materials—works created for use in the classroom that may be reused and/or adapted by others, like assignments, lectures or other OERs

“Many of our new areas of collecting reflect the university’s continued growth,” Powell said. “We collect �þ��� and learning materials to reflect the excellence in �þ��� from our faculty, and allow for a wide range of student work to showcase our expansive �þ��� research. Even our data and code collection connects to the continued work of Data Nexus.”

Submitting your work to Elon Collect only takes three simple steps:

1. Find or create a work that you or the university hold copyrights to and wish to share further.
2. Go to and navigate to the “Submit” header. Select a submission form and provide basic descriptions (also known as metadata) to make your work more discoverable.
3. Submit your form and wait for the repository team to review. Once the team has ensured the work fits into the system scope and has the necessary metadata, your work will be made available in the system.

Questions?

To learn more, join Belk Library on Monday, September 21 at 1 p.m. for the first workshop in our Scholars’ Toolkit series: Showcasing Your Scholarly and Professional Work in Elon Collect and ORCiD. .

For further information, visit or email elon-collect@elon.edu.

Peter Felten, executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, was featured in a recent Inside Higher Ed article about student belonging on campus.

The article, , examines new survey data showing that while many students feel known and valued, a significant minority report feeling invisible or disconnected.

Felten has written extensively about the importance of relationships and mattering to student success and emphasizes the importance of ensuring that every student feels seen and valued during their college experience.

“Every student can and should feel like they matter in college,” Felten told Inside Higher Ed, noting the difference between “belonging” and “mattering. Unlike belonging, which can depend on feeling that one fits into a particular environment, he said, mattering is rooted in feeling valued and known and having something to contribute within a given context—something that’s theoretically attainable for all students, regardless of age or any other factor that could challenge one’s sense of fitting in.

He noted that meaningful relationships with faculty, staff and peers are central to helping students develop a sense of purpose, connection and belonging.

The article highlights survey findings indicating that while most students can identify someone on campus who knows them in a meaningful way, nearly one-quarter are unsure whether anyone truly knows them or say they feel invisible.

Of the 9% of students who reported feeling wholly unseen, Felten said that’s “a failure on our part—those of us who teach and work in higher education need to create conditions where all students feel they matter. That’s crucial for student well-being, learning and persistence.”

Peter Felten, assistant provost for �þ��� and learning, and executive director of Elon’s Center for Engaged Learning, was quoted in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education feature examining the enduring value of discussion-based, text-centered learning.

The article, explores how the college’s Great Books curriculum emphasizes conversation, critical thinking and intellectual community in an era increasingly shaped by technology and artificial intelligence.

Felten emphasized that the most transferable aspect of St. John’s model is not necessarily its curriculum, but its underlying philosophy of education, specifically that learning can be difficult and is a communal act.

“I don’t think we spend enough time talking with students about how what we’re doing is supposed to be challenging,” says Felten. “If you’re in a community where you see other people struggling with the same material, and you can talk with them and think with them and not feel like you’re weird because it’s hard, then I think it’s motivating, then it’s exciting.”

Each spring, the (CEL), the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL), the Center for Research on Global Engagement (CRGE) and the Center for Writing Excellence (CWE) co-sponsor this annual showcase of faculty, staff, and student research on �þ��� and learning. The presenters have all participated in or been supported by SoTL programming across these centers. The event features a poster session and catered reception, offering the campus community an opportunity to engage with studies of innovative pedagogical work and reflect on the impact of SoTL on scholarly �þ��� practices across disciplines.

This year’s SoTL showcase brings together interdisciplinary projects exploring topics such as students-as-partners collaborations, equity and belonging in STEM, global approaches to intercultural learning and integrating GenAI into �þ��� and learning.

From CEL, the  will present on their students’ experience co-leading CEL’s. They’ll highlight the multi-institutional inquiry at the heart of three multi-year research seminars, as well as the benefits of student-faculty/staff co-inquiry for both student and faculty/staff partners.

Representing CATL, Kelsey Bitting, assistant professor of environmental studies, and Jessica Merricks, associate professor of biology, will present their 2025-2027 CATL Scholar research on the impacts of community-engaged courses on first-generation students, students of color and women in STEM disciplines. Additionally, Amanda Chunco, associate professor of environmental students and 2024-2026 CATL Scholar, will present her work on grading practices and student belonging in STEM.

From the CRGE, Bill Burress, director of assessment and accreditation for the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education and CRGE pre-doctoral scholar, will present research on international mobility in teacher preparation across the United States and Italy. Emily Moser, program coordinator for CEL and CATL; Michael Carignan, professor of history; and Lynn Huber, professor of religious studies, recipients of a CRGE faculty-staff research grant, will present their collaborative project exploring visual inquiry methods as a tool to foster and assess intercultural competence in global contexts.

����������Գپ��Բ����ٳ����Center for Writing Excellence, Shannon Duvall, professor of computer science and interim associate dean for College of Arts and Sciences will present her project “Exploring Large Language Models for Teaching and Accessibility.”

All faculty, staff and students are invited to attend and engage with presenters during this celebration of the scholarship of �þ��� and learning at Elon.

Many high-profile discussions about GenAI in higher education focus on the extremes—avoiding all AI or adopting AI for all activities. However, GenAI use falls along a more complex spectrum, and disciplinary standards should inform students’ development of critical GenAI literacy. Across disciplines, novice users initially might understand GenAI as a neutral tool. As engaged learners develop more expertise with GenAI, they might critically reflect on how GenAI could augment their work—or even view GenAI as a collaborator. Given this complex context, research on GenAI in higher education engaged learning must attend to GenAI use beyond higher education to prepare students to apply critical GenAI literacy in their professional, civic and personal lives. Together, we’ll investigate:

• What higher education learning entails in the age of GenAI;
• GenAI’s (potential) role as a collaborator in �þ��� and learning;
• Decision processes for when and how to use GenAI as a collaboration partner;
• Assessing learning in an age of GenAI support; and
• Professional learning needs and strategies for students, faculty, and staff to support critical GenAI literacy.

Accepted CEL Student Scholars will collaborate with three �þ��� faculty – Amanda Sturgill, Aaron Trocki and Jessie L. Moore to lead international, multi-institutional research on this engaged learning topic.

Eligibility

The CEL Student Scholar program is open to current �þ��� first-year students (during the 2025-26 academic year) from any major. Applicants should have an interest in engaged learning in higher education (broadly) and in the 2026-2029 research topic—Rethinking Engaged Learning in the Age of GenAI.

First-year students apply in spring (Spring 2026) to begin the program in the summer between their first and second years (Summer 2026).

What Will CEL Student Scholars Do?

Accepted CEL Student Scholars will collaborate on a three-year research project with Elon faculty and staff and with CEL Research Seminar participants from colleges and universities around the world.

Read more about the CEL Student Scholar experiences from current and past scholars .

During three consecutive summers (e.g., 2026, 2027, 2028), CEL Student Scholars will:

• Co-lead the 2026-2029 research seminar on Rethinking Engaged Learning in the Age of GenAI, providing the student perspective in sessions with seminar participants;
• Receive a $3,000 summer stipend as compensation for the Student Scholar’s work during the summer;
• Have access to double or single-occupancy, on-campus, summer housing;
• Participate in a week-long research seminar meeting with faculty and staff from Elon and other colleges and universities around the globe, with all meals provided throughout the week;
• Attend (and during second and third summers, present at) the ;
• Collaborate in weekly meetings with the seminar co-leaders and/or the CEL Director to advance the research project, collaborate on resources and learn about strategies for studying engaged learning;
• Join other CEL Student Scholars and the CEL Director for weekly meetings to discuss student-faculty partnership, engaged learning research and practices, strategies for studying engaged learning, and other cross-seminar topics; and
• Have opportunities to attend events with other �þ��� researchers and other CEL research seminar teams, often with meals provided.

During their second, third, and fourth academic years (e.g., 2026-2027, 2027-2028, 2028-2029), CEL Student Scholars will…

• Receive a $1,000 stipend each semester as compensation for the Student Scholar’s work during the academic year;
• Participate in two meetings a week, scheduled to accommodate CEL Student Scholars’ availability during the day:
  • Collaborate in one-hour meetings every week with the seminar co-leaders;
  • Join other CEL Student Scholars and the CEL Director for a one-hour meeting every week to discuss engaged learning research and practices, strategies for studying engaged learning, and other cross-seminar topics;
• Check in with research seminar teams via Zoom a few times each year; and
• Spend an additional 1-2 hours a week completing research tasks.

Typically, two students will be accepted as CEL Student Scholars each year. Accepted scholars can discuss with the CEL Director and their advisor whether they wish to register for 4999 �þ��� research credit during one or more of their semesters as a CEL Student Scholar. Acceptance as a CEL Student Scholar also does not preclude participation in other Elon experiences like study away and internships.

Application Guidelines

To apply, submit the following materials by April 6, 2026:

• A letter of application, and
• A supporting letter of recommendation from an �þ��� faculty or staff member.

Letter of Application

Your letter of application (approximately two pages) should:

• Describe your interest in the research topic—Rethinking Engaged Learning in the Age of GenAI—and in collaborating with faculty to lead international research about engaged learning;
• Briefly introduce your major (and any minors), as well as other campus, community, or workplace activities that shape who you are; and
• Reflect on what you would hope to gain from this three-year research collaboration.

Submit an electronic copy of your letter of application to CEL Director, Jessie L. Moore (jmoore28@elon.edu), by April 6, 2026.

Supporting Letter of Recommendation

Your supporting letter of recommendation should come from an �þ��� faculty or staff member who can speak to:

• Your preparation for undertaking this mentored research opportunity; and
• Contributions you might make to the program, through both your collaboration with CEL’s research seminar participants and your interactions with other CEL Student Scholars.

The �þ��� faculty or staff member writing your supporting letter of recommendation should submit an electronic copy of the letter to CEL Director, Jessie L. Moore (jmoore28@elon.edu), by April 6, 2026.

Learn More

Learn more about the CEL Student Scholars program . Please direct questions about the program to CEL Director, Jessie L. Moore (jmoore28@elon.edu).

The article, titled “,” highlights the importance of having a faculty or staff member who cares and is engaged with them. Felten, who authored “Connections are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education,” told Forbes that to find this on campus, students need to be proactive researchers.

“I’m a fan of open-ended questions and storytelling,” Felten said.

Felten suggests asking students questions like “Tell me about a professor who inspires you” or “Tell me about someone you’ve met in class who you’ve really connected with.”

When talking with admission officers, he tells families to ask: “Can you tell me about a student you know who has meaningfully connected with a professor?”

“I’ve found those kinds of open questions/prompts are good conversation starters because it’s easy to ask follow-up questions,” Felten said. “And if you ask a few different people this kind of question at a college, you might start noticing patterns; for example, students here seem to make friends in their first-year courses. At the same time, you might notice things people do not​ talk about; for example, none of the students who described inspiring professors have actually had a conversation with that professor.”

Katie Baker, associate professor of education and associate chair of the Department of Education and Wellness at �þ���’s Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education, has been selected as the 2026–28 . Baker will focus her research on ePortfolios as a high-impact educational practice.

CEL Scholars are faculty members who engage in sustained, multi-year inquiry around engaged learning practices, contributing to the center’s research, publications and national outreach. Baker’s work will draw on her extensive experience supporting ePortfolios in teacher education, particularly through her role as edTPA coordinator for Elon’s teacher preparation programs.

Since joining Elon in 2017, Baker has played a central role in implementing and sustaining the edTPA, a required performance-based ePortfolio assessment for teacher licensure in North Carolina. The edTPA requires teacher candidates to demonstrate their planning, instruction, and assessment through a digital portfolio that includes lesson artifacts, reflective commentary, and video recordings of classroom instruction. In her coordinator role, Baker supports teacher candidates, faculty and community-based clinical teachers across multiple content areas and licensure programs.

Baker’s scholarly work includes national and state-level presentations and publications on teacher education, mathematics education and performance-based assessment. She has served in leadership roles within the mathematics education community and has contributed to externally funded research focused on equitable and high-quality instruction. Her selection as a CEL Scholar enables her to build on this record of engaged scholarship and institutional leadership while exploring ePortfolio research and practices across other disciplinary contexts.

The Center for Engaged Learning supports research and dialogue on evidence-based �þ��� practices that foster deep student learning. CEL Scholars play a key role in advancing that mission by connecting disciplinary expertise with broader conversations about engaged learning in higher education.
Baker will join an esteemed group of previous CEL Scholars, including David Buck, Caroline Ketcham, Amanda Kleintop, Ketevan Kupatadze, Buffie Longmire-Avital, Phillip Motley, Amanda Sturgill, Aaron Trocki and Cora Wigger. Applications for the 2027-29 CEL Scholar will open in Fall 2026.

The presentation, entitled “Crafting a successful education abroad research experience: Professional development for mentoring �þ��� research in global contexts (MUR-GC),” features an on-going collaboration between Whitehead and Vandermaas-Peeler, a senior fellow at AAC&U, to study MUR-GC.

The DIS collaborators have written a chapter on their MUR-GC model for a forthcoming CEL open access book on MUR-GC edited by Vandermaas-Peeler and Whitehead.

The 3rd Latin SoTL conference brought together educators from across Latin America focused on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Kupatadze, who teaches in Elon’s Department of World Languages and Cultures, presented two sessions. Her keynote, “From Local Perspectives to Global Conversations: Strategies for Effective Dissemination and Publication of SoTL,” addressed how Latin American educators can share their innovative �þ��� practices with international audiences. Her workshop, “From Frustration to Opportunity: Exploring the International Publication Potential of Your Work,” helped participants reframe their classroom challenges as valuable research opportunities.

“What moved me most was witnessing the energy, enthusiasm, and dedication of colleagues who accomplish so much with limited resources,” Kupatadze reflected. “The Latin SoTL community is doing extraordinary work, often in challenging circumstances, and their voices are essential to understanding learning in diverse global contexts.”

A central theme of Kupatadze’s presentations was that the global conversation about �þ��� and learning is incomplete without robust participation from Latin American scholars. She emphasized that the pedagogical innovations emerging from Latin American classrooms, where educators regularly navigate large class sizes, diverse student populations, and resource constraints, offer valuable insights for the international academic community.

Following the conference, Kupatadze is exploring collaborative opportunities with Latin SoTL leaders, including a potential reflective article for the journal Teaching and Learning Inquiry that would examine how the international SoTL community can better support and amplify Latin American educational scholarship.

“These colleagues aren’t asking for help, they’re offering knowledge the world needs,” Kupatadze said. “My goal is to help build bridges so their essential contributions reach the global stage they deserve.”