Purdue Fort Wayne set to welcome 180 educators from seven countries for major conference

A major conference for individuals who teach courses in management and organizational behavior will be held Tuesday through Friday on the campus of Purdue University Fort Wayne. Approximately 180 individuals from seven countries are expected to attend.

The last time the Management & Organizational Behavior Teaching Society’s annual conference was scheduled to take place at Purdue Fort Wayne in 2020, the pandemic forced it – like just about everything else – to move online. Event organizers at PFW now get a second chance to do it all in person. The work required to return to this point has taken two years.

“We’re excited to welcome an awful lot of people to a city they’re likely never going to have the chance to visit,” said Mike Kirchner, associate professor and graduate program director in PFW’s Department of Organizational Leadership. “It’s a great opportunity to show off our community and the campus.”

The conference, which is MOBTS’ 52nd, will include roughly 100 activity options at Walb Student Union and the Liberal Arts Building. They vary in focus; some include the promotion of experiential learning, exercises to encourage innovative approaches to teaching content, and examining challenges in the classroom.

Kirchner and Kim O’Connor, PFW’s associate vice chancellor for teaching and learning, are members of the MOBTS board of directors and conference site co-chairs.

“It is a great opportunity,” O’Connor said. “The sessions are incredible at producing ideas and activities for the classroom. It’s just energizing and makes you excited for the next academic year.”

O’Connor said she’s attended several MOBTS conferences in the U.S. and abroad.

“I’ll never forget my first,” Kirchner said. “I left with 27 ideas that I wanted to use. That was all from just one conference.

“These are tools and resources we can use. Some people mentor junior faculty who are interested in improving, so even if we can’t always directly apply these things in our classrooms, there’s still a toolbox we can pull from during mentor reviews.”

This year’s conference at PFW is hosted by its College of Engineering, Technology, and Computer Science, and the Doermer School of Business, but other parts of the university are also pitching in. Including O’Connor and Kirchner, 15 faculty and staff members are taking part in the presentations.

“It’s about reminding ourselves who the primary stakeholders are – namely, our students,” Kirchner said. “How do we better support and prepare our students for their future?”

Contact Geoff Thomas at [email protected] or 260-437-7657 (mobile) to receive a list of sessions, explore coverage opportunities, and request more information.