This year, the organizers of the University of Windsor-Oakland University Teaching and Learning Conference invite you to take part in a special day-long pre-conference event, the Educational Leadership Forum.

Instructors, staff and students who are leaders, who are interested in being leaders, or who don’t see themselves as leaders but find themselves in roles where influencing and helping others to facilitate change is a necessary part of getting the work done, all have much to contribute, so please consider attending! We welcome those who are in both formal (e.g., vice-provosts, teaching and learning, academic administrators, and teaching leadership chairs) and informal leadership roles (i.e., leaders “on the ground” – spearheading new programs, initiatives, curriculum re-designs, educational policy reform, and a myriad of other projects intended to improve teaching, learning, or the student experience).

The Forum will bring together instructors, faculty and staff, and graduate students from Canada and the United States who have undertaken leadership roles – formal or informal, large or small – at institutions, in initiatives, or on projects intended to enhance teaching or student learning at their institutions. It will be an opportunity to meet and discuss leadership with others taking on similar challenges, and to learn from one another, as well as from experts and seasoned leaders, about what has helped to make this kind of leadership easier, more successful, more stimulating, and more sustainable at institutions around the world.

During the Forum, participants will collaboratively explore:

• their views of the characteristics and scope of educational leadership;
• their motivators, roles, organizational models, outcomes, and the conditions for success of projects they are undertaking (or have undertaken);
• their experience of obstacles and challenges faced in attempting to move initiatives forward at their universities;
• their views of the kinds of professional development and institutional support that have helped them, or would help them, to grow as educational leaders; and
• potential interest and next steps in the development of increased inter-institutional collaboration and more formal inter-institutional networks for educational leaders.

Invited speakers will provide brief, highly engaging portraits of the leadership contexts at their institutions. We will also use a review of the educational leadership landscape at the University of Windsor to illustrate how one institution reflects emerging models of distributed educational leadership, drawing participants into explorations of how these models reflect their own institutional experiences.