ALC CFP Fall 2026: Get Outside! (Fort, Martin, and Yang)

Conveners:
Lydia Fort, Associate Professor, Theater Studies
Anthony Martin, Professor of Practice, Environmental Sciences
Melissa T. Yang, Associate Teaching Professor, English/Writing Program

Description:
The “Get Outside!” Academic Learning Community, developed in partnership with Writing Across Emory (WAE), invites instructors to take their teaching outdoors. We will engage with Emory’s woods, creeks, gardens, and green spaces to observe multisensory and multispecies interactions. Participants will be introduced to a range of approaches, including guided observation, reflective and descriptive writing, and contemplative practices that cultivate attentive presence and relational ways of knowing. Re/discover your personal relationship with the natural world, learn about local ecologies, and create webs of interbeing. Together, we will practice being in relationship with the natural world and weaving these embodied entanglements into our academic and pedagogical lives.

Topics/Goals:

  • Exchange and develop a range of guided writing and teaching prompts grounded in outdoor, place- and nature-based learning.
  • Cultivate practices of observation, listening and witnessing, as methods of inquiry.
  • Explore a variety of descriptive writing, dialogue, and storytelling through engagement with the natural world.
  • Build a community of peers committed to relational, ecological, and interdisciplinary teaching practices.

Particulars:

We will meet for six Friday sessions at 10:00am- 11:15am in Fall 2026: 9/11, 9/25, 10/9, 10/23, 11/6, 11/20.
We can accept up to 18 participants.

Each session will involve a guided outing, beginning with a tour of the Emory Educational Gardens. We will engage in teaching discussions and demos across Emory’s natural spaces—from forest bathing to birding, tracking, and nature journaling in Baker Woods, Hahn Woods, and Lullwater.  Deadline for applications is August 31, 2026.

Academic Learning Communities are informal seminars that are intended to:

  • engage faculty, graduate students, post docs, and staff in collaborative explorations of innovative research and teaching topics;
  • bring guest speakers to campus to enhance the curriculum and learning; and/or
  • help disseminate important research discoveries and innovative learning strategies to the broader community.
For more information on our past academic learning communities please see: http://cfde.emory.edu/programs/academiclearningcommunities/
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During the Fall semester, the learning community will meet in person from 10:00am-11:15am on the following Fridays.  Please select the sessions you are able to attend:
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