Get your taxes done early! We are planning a full day of update speakers, workshops, and poster presentations for Saturday, April 15 in Tyler Texas. Our morning update speaker will be Dr. Michael Beckstead, Associate Professor in the Department of Cellular and Integrative Physiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Dr. Beckstead will be speaking about dopamine neurons and Parkinson’s Disease. In the afternoon, Dr. Lane Brunner, Dean of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Texas at Tyler, will talk about how team-based learning has been implemented in the Doctor of Pharmacy program.
As always, workshops will be given by HAPS members. Do you have a unique approach to teaching a lab or a new angle to get complicated ideas across? Have you found a solution to a common challenge or a new tool (or a new way to use an old tool) that helps your students? If you need to practice your presentation for the national conference in Salt Lake City, or you won’t be able to attend the SLC conference, we’re here for you! Submit your workshop proposal by March 24.
Posters will be set up adjacent to the workshop rooms. If you have an idea that suits a poster more than a workshop – even if it’s a poster you’ve already presented in another venue – we’ll have a place for you to share what you’ve done. A simple idea, or an exploratory look at some new teaching tip, tool, or resource can easily be translated into a poster. Poster submissions have the same deadline as workshop submissions, March 24.
We’ll be meeting in the newly-renovated A&P labs, so you can get some ideas from our faculty about how technology can be implemented in the lab. The use of overhead cameras to show specimens, iPads in the classroom, and structured group activities can be explored.
At the end of the day, we’ll have the opportunity to tour our new nursing and health science facility, including the simulation lab for nursing students (see image below). The first floor has an area that is set up basically as a hospital, so students get real-world training in LVN, surgical technology, and other fields. There is also a working dental clinic.
If you’re planning to come in Friday afternoon or stay over Saturday night, look for a link to the accommodations on the registration page. If you’re bringing family with you, they can explore our Center for Earth and Space Science Education (CESSE, http://sciencecenter.tjc.edu/) and the Tyler Museum of Art (http://www.tylermuseum.org/), both adjacent to the building where our conference will be held. If there is enough interest, we can plan a social event for either Friday or Saturday evening. I look forward to seeing you all!
Betsy Ott, Conference Coordinator
