About the conference.

The Fort Wayne Teaching and Learning Conference, informally known as the Area Deans’ Conference, began in 1998. The academic deans of seven area colleges and universities had begun meeting a few times a year to share information about issues that affected them all, irrespective of differences in mission, size, or philosophy.

The growing need to understand and use instructional technology led to a decision to sponsor a conference at which faculty from their institutions could share their work. The 1998 Teaching and Technology Conference, held on the Fort Wayne Ivy Tech campus, was so successful that the colleges and universities agreed to make the conference an annual event. Since 1999, it has been held on the Purdue Fort Wayne campus.

2027 FWTLC Conference

The 30th Annual Fort Wayne Teaching and Learning Conference will be held in person at Purdue Fort Wayne on Friday, February 19, 2027.

Registration is required to attend. Please check back for updates as we get closer to the conference.

Keynote & Plenary Speaker Kevin Gannon, phd Kevin Gannon is Director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence (CAFÉ) and Professor of History at Queens University of Charlotte, in North Carolina. He spent nearly 25 years as a faculty member, serving as a program coordinator and department chair along the way, until moving full-time into faculty development. He is the author of Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (West Virginia University Press, 2020), and the co-editor of The Campus Crisis Toolkit: Strategies and Solidarity for the Rest of Us (SUNY Press, 2026). His writing has appeared in outlets such as Vox, CNN, and The Washington Post, and he has been a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Even in an administrative role, Kevin continues to work with first-year students (a particular passion of his) by teaching sections of Queens’ new student seminar course, the Queens Roadmap, every fall semester.

Participating Colleges