IAMU News No.13, October 2006

CAL MARITIME WILL HOST FIRST-EVER CONFERENCE

The California Maritime Academy will host the first-ever conference on "Teaching and Learning in the Maritime Environment," March 28 -30, 2007 at their Vallejo, CA campus, 25 miles north of San Francisco.

The original concept for the program was developed by the Academy's Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Don Zingale. "The process of maritime education is a unique one," he notes. "It's a mixture of traditional curriculum and scholarship, coupled with experiential and learner-centered instruction. That combination offers a rich experience, but also presents special challenges for both teaching and learning. Significant numbers of our faculty come to us via non-traditional tracks such as the maritime or maritime business fields and bring their experiences to our classrooms."

"The idea of the conference is to bring together a wide-ranging and stimulating mix of educators, practitioners and academicians - both traditional scholars and non-traditional - to explore the challenges, the benefits and the best practices of teaching in this specialized sector."

Academy President William B. Eisenhardt said the conference has a series of goals:

• Recognizing the contribution of all types of maritime faculty to the body of knowledge that is maritime education.
• Introducing maritime educators - many of them newer to the role of faculty -- to the basics of contemporary pedagogy and scholarship.
• Providing a platform for juried lectures and workshops on current best practices in the field, including publication of post-conference Proceedings.
• Enhancing networking and sharing of resources between maritime universities and related organizations with a maritime education mission.
• Establishing maritime education as a recognized leader and exemplar in developing new directions in higher education.

Based on initial discussions among colleagues at other maritime institutions, interest in this subject area is very strong, as is the opportunity for face-to-face exchanges of ideas, information and current practices among traditional and non-traditional faculty involved in maritime education and those considering entering the field.

Information about the event, registration information, and a call for papers can be found by clicking the conference link on the homepage at www.csum.edu or by calling Veronica Boe, Office of Sponsored Projects and Extended Learning at (707) 654-1156.