About the Conference

The Engage Immigration conference gathers liberal arts college faculty and staff for an interdisciplinary network-building opportunity focused on sharing best practices in community based-learning, scholarship and engagement with immigrants and immigration-contexts. Sessions during our day and a half long conference include:

• Plenary address from an accomplished public scholar in immigration studies
  
• Hands-on workshops to share information on ethical concerns, questions and best practices; course design; public data sets (quantitative and qualitative); digital scholarship; and public history outreach
  
• Interactive introductions from all conference participants introducing their own research & projects, to facilitate networking
  
• Collaboration exploration and planning sessions focused on specific opportunities (e.g., grants, journal CFPs and conferences)

Engage Immigration Community of Practice

With generous support from an Associated Colleges of the Midwest Faculty Career Enhancement (ACM FaCE) grant, Kathy Tegtmeyer Pak (St. Olaf College), Adrienne Falcon (Metropolitan State University, formerly Carleton College), and Emily Bowman (Coe College) have brought together colleagues Xavier Escandell (Grinnell College), Catherine Denial (Knox College), and Timothy Gaster (Monmouth University) for a year-long effort to learn from each other and build a shared knowledge-base about ethically responsible, engaged immigration research and related academic projects.  Our conversations have focused on new immigrant destinations, pedagogy for on and off-campus courses (domestically and internationally) addressing immigration-related topics, and ethical questions raised in community-based learning and research involving immigrants. We intend for this conference to broaden our network and facilitate additional collaboration across ACM colleges and our surrounding community partners and related organizations in the Midwest. Participants can expect to leave the conference with new ideas and tools for publicly-minded teaching and research related to immigration.