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The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) invites all members of the campus community to attend the Mei-Yau Shih Keynote Speaker Series talk, “Beyond Preservation: Rehumanizing the University from the Inside Out,” presented by Randy Bass, on Wednesday, Oct. 14, from 4-5:30 p.m., in Old Chapel. The talk and Q&A will be followed by a light reception with the speaker.

Bass is vice president for strategic education initiatives and professor of English at Georgetown University, where he leads the Designing the Future(s) initiative and the Red House incubator for curricular transformation. He has been working at the intersections of university transformation, emerging technologies and the scholarship of teaching and learning for nearly 30 years. 

Placing human experience, relationships, and complex problem-solving at the center of education is more important than ever, Bass says, yet this rehumanization is not about going back to an older educational model, but by working through some long standing binaries and biases in order to move past preservation to renewal. His talk will explore the ways that classroom practices and faculty-led experiences can help move toward an emerging paradigm of learning by emphasizing human capacities fit to the future.

Drawing from the history and landscape of higher education, he will explore how rehumanization and reinvention, from the classroom out, go hand in hand as universities look to adapt to change without losing core values.

Bass is the author or co-author of numerous books and articles, including “Can We Liberate Liberal Education?” in “Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education,” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) and “Architecture of the Unexpected: Beyond the Learning Paradigm,” in “Recentering Learning: Complexity, Resilience, and Adaptability in Higher Education” (Hopkins Press, 2025).  Since 2024, he has also been serving as Senior Advisor to the President at University of North Texas.

More information about the event can be found on the CTL website, To register to attend the event, complete the form found here.