Conference Season

The writer is a former president.

A friend recently raised a very good question: Given everything we know and believe about effective pedagogy, why do higher ed conferences stubbornly persist with a trio of old-school formats: the lecture, the panel discussion, and the “workshop”? Shouldn’t they reflect more current pedagogical understandings? [Ed’s note: What kind of friend would say such a thing?]

The question, I thought, revealed a category error. Learning is not actually the point of such conferences, so pedagogy is the wrong model. Even when they carry pedagogical titles like “institute,” “symposium,” or “seminar,” it’s a safe bet that learning is the least of the benefits those registered are seeking. Can we just admit that?

Conferences allow hard-pressed and lonely academic leaders the invaluable opportunity to be in the company, for a few days, of others who get what they’re going through; in this sense they’re somewhere on the spectrum between support groups and therapy.

Conferences offer the slightly prurient but always-compelling draw of class reunions: Who’s still here? Who isn’t? Who’s “winning” professional life these days? Who works for the biggest-name employer or has the highest-ranking title, and who’s moved downstream since last year? as well as the sincere and truly nourishing pleasures of reconnecting with one’s actual peeps.

And, of course, conferences offer the undeniable charm of stepping out of today’s messy demands into a sort of theme park in which presidents are still respected and weighty cultural leaders making consequential decisions and where shrimp boats, breakfast buffets, and open bars are still on regular offer. Sometimes at such conferences I find myself thinking about Brigadoon and the charm of visits to older, better days, intermittently and temporarily made possible.

Those things are what people come to conferences for—the networking, the showing off, the therapeutic heart-to-hearts in the corners of bars and coffee shops, a bit of R&R, and yes, maybe to pick up an idea here or there. But if you ever imagined it was actually for the sessions, just reflect for a moment on the common experience of stepping out of a half-filled session in progress (having prudently taken a seat conveniently next to a door) to join the crowded scene in a hallway full of colleagues mostly on their phones or tablets, but also engaged in greeting, chatting, seeing and being seen.

But all this requires a bit of a fig leaf to obscure any hint of boondoggling. Sessions are inevitable and necessary to justify (and at best energize) all the real stuff that draws us back year after year. Sessions offer the chance to speak to or moderate sessions for one’s peers, opportunities for résumé-building and mentioning casually to one’s board or faculty that one is a nationally sought-after expert on something or other. (This is perhaps especially treasured by those feeling like prophets without a whole lot of honor in their own lands.) They offer a showcase to sponsors. Programs as published represent an assertion of important work being done, helping justify the dues paid to the organizing organization by its members (most of whom are not actually present in any given year.)

They are in all these ways indispensable.