2025
TEACHxWSU
Developing Meaningful Assignments
TEACHxWSU 2025
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On October 3, the WSU Teaching Academy hosted student success and teaching and learning expert Christine Harrington for a morning interactive workshop titled “Creating Culturally Affirming and Meaningful Assignments.”
Afternoon workshops were presented by WSU faculty on a range of topics focused on developing assignments that are meaningful to our students. Watch parties will enabled attendees across the WSU system to engage in these workshops from each campus and participate in discussion groups specific to their context.
WSU faculty, staff, and graduate students were invited to register for TEACHxWSU 2025 and take part in the full schedule of events planned for the day.
Prepare for TEACHxWSU 2025
TEACHxWSU 2025 participants can read Creating Culturally Affirming and Meaningful Assignments: A Practical Resource for Higher Education Faculty, edited by keynote speaker Christine Harrington, via WSU Libraries at no cost.
The book is this year’s selection for the WSU Teaching Academy Book Club, which will offer synchronous discussion sessions this fall and is designed to help participants develop teaching skills and meet and network with others to exchange perspectives and examine topics.
The book offers principles, strategies, and examples to aid in the development of inclusive college coursework in which all students feel seen and valued. It prepares instructors to proactively consider ways to honor and engage with students’ varied identities and lived experiences through assignments. Chapters cover the course design process, methods on getting to know your students, assignment options beyond the exam, and more.
Conference Agenda
Keynote Address and Workshop
9:30 – 11:30 a.m.
Keynote & Workshop: “Creating Culturally Affirming and Meaningful Assignments”
This keynote and workshop will be presented by Christine Harrington. During this interactive workshop, you will explore student-endorsed and research-based approaches to assignments. Be challenged to think beyond traditional assignments and develop assignments that validate, honor, stretch, and engage your students. Explore how to use choice, transparency, structure, and support to increase student success.
Afternoon Workshops Choose Your Own Adventure
12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Identity Matters: Incorporating Reflexivity into Course Design
Presented by Hillary Mellinger and aligned with this year’s Teaching Academy book, Creating Culturally Affirming and Meaningful Assignments, workshop participants will brainstorm what “culturally affirming and meaningful assignments” look like across disciplines, class sizes, and modalities (online vs. in-person). We will discuss how to create more “reflection moments” in our courses in general, not just in assignments. Please come prepared with your questions, ideas, and thoughts!
12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Creating Space for Meaning-Making and Supporting Student Engagement
Presented by Brenna Miller this interactive workshop will explore how to design class activities and assignments across disciplines that invite students to make personal connections and meaning of their studies. The session will open with a discussion of the relationship between student meaning-making and engagement, offering a variety of practical strategies and examples. In addition, participants will have time to reflect on their own teaching contexts, begin drafting or revising an activity or assignment, and exchange ideas and feedback with peers and the group as a whole. The aim of the workshop is to provide space to envision how even small shifts in assignment design can lead to more meaningful and motivating learning experiences.
12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Assessing Equity in Assignments: Writing Assignments that Matter
This workshop led by Angela Mitchell will explore the connection between writing assignments and equity as we consider whether assignment formats influence students’ demonstration of learning. By focusing on utility value, we will examine how students value different types of writing assignments and address ways to ensure we provide our students with inclusive content that is aligned with our teaching goals, uses accessible materials, and provides clear instructions and scaffolding.
12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Getting Started with Community Engaged Learning
Led by Allison Rockwell, this workshop will discuss how to promote student involvement in the community through course projects and individual volunteering, the proven effectiveness of service-learning as an experiential learning strategy. It will also explain how the Center for Civic Engagement provides resources and logistical support.
12:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Creating Authenticity: Career and World Readiness in the Classroom
Not merely the purview of the career center, career readiness marks academic coursework ranging from introductory to capstone as authentic and applicable. In this interactive workshop, Clif Stratton will lead participants through an exploration of their own learning goals, assignments, and activities to identify and pursue opportunities to introduce or make more intentional the essential skills students will need in career, yes, but also in community, citizenship, and life.
About Our Presenters
Christine Harrington
Dr. Christine Harrington a student success and teaching learning expert with 25 years of experience in higher education. She is a Professor in the Department of Advanced Studies, Leadership and Policy at Morgan State University. Previously, Dr. Harrington coordinated the Ed.D. in Community College Leadership program in the Deborah Cannon Partridge Wolfe College of Education at New Jersey City University and worked at Middlesex College as a professor of psychology and student success, director of their Center for the Enrichment of Learning and Teaching, counselor, and disability service provider. She has authored and edited over 10 books on teaching and learning and student success, including Keeping Us Engaged, Creating Culturally Affirming and Meaningful Assignments, Designing a Motivational Syllabus, and Dynamic Lecturing, and has been an invited presenter at more than 75 colleges and universities across the nation. She has also received several teaching awards.
Hillary Mellinger
Hillary Mellinger is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at WSU Pullman. Prior to joining the department in fall 2021, Dr. Mellinger taught at George Washington University, George Mason University, and American University. Before pursuing her Ph.D., she worked as a Board of Immigration Appeals Accredited Representative at the Tahirih Justice Center, a national nonprofit organization that supports immigrant women and girls fleeing gender-based violence through a combination of legal representation, social services and public policy. Her research focuses upon asylum policy, the criminalization of migration, the immigration legal profession, and interpretation challenges within the criminal justice system and immigration system.
Brenna Miller
Brenna Miller is an Assistant Professor of History who received her Ph.D. in History from the Ohio State University in 2018, and completed her Masters at the University of Toronto and Bachelors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on 20th century Southeastern Europe, and her research interests include nationalism, socialism, Islam, cultural history, transnational history, multiculturalism, movement and migration, and the Global Cold War. Dr. Miller teaches in the Roots of Contemporary Issues (RCI) Global History Program at Washington State University, and has also taught courses in Modern European, Eastern European, and World Histories.
Angela Mitchell
Angela Mitchell is the director of the WSU Writing Program. Prior to this, she served as the director of first-year writing at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Angela received her Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in English all from the University of Georgia. She has years of experience guiding university writing initiatives and considerable teaching experience and research into writing studies. Her focus is always on students and the supports they need for learning to write effectively.
Allison Rockwell
Allison Rockwell is the Service-Learning Coordinator at the Center for Civic Engagement. Allison brings considerable experience to this role from having been a former middle school science teacher and curriculum writer with Hampton City Schools, Virginia, and an assistant professor of education at Old Dominion University.
Clif Stratton
Clif Stratton is an Associate Professor of History who joined Washington State University in 2010 after completing a Ph.D. in History at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His teaching and research are centrally interested in how race and racism have shaped the world we inhabit, including how it intersects with things ranging from education, environmental change, global politics, and popular culture. Dr. Stratton’s teaching is marked by a commitment to ensuring that every student has a transformative learning experience at WSU and is guided by principles of equity, belonging, and curiosity. Learning and engagement are the two requirements for every student in Clif’s courses.