Speakers & Pre-Conferences
35th Annual APPE International Conference
This year's conference will feature an Opening Plenary on Thursday, March 5 and a Keynote Address on Friday, March 6.
Pre-conference sessions will be held on Thursday, March 5.
Keynote Speaker: Pamela Hieronymi
Friday, March 6, 2026 | 4:15 - 5:30 p.m.
Opening Plenary: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Thursday, March 5, 2026 | 4:30 - 6 p.m.
With increasing frequency, individuals in the United States are questioning whether they should leave the country, while people from other nations are reconsidering their plans to visit the U.S. for tourism, education, business, or other purposes. This questioning is driven by the perception that the current U.S. government is acting unjustly in various ways. Although this issue is particularly intense at present, it is not a new ethical dilemma. Rather, it is a contemporary manifestation of the broader ethical question: What are our obligations to others or ourselves if we find ourselves part of institutions that are acting unjustly? Should we remain within these institutions and strive to enact change from within, or should we leave in protest? This panel will explore these questions in the context of the current political turmoil in the United States.
Panelists:
- Derrick Crawford is an attorney based in Indianapolis. He is a former FBI agent, state prosecutor, and an attorney for the NFL.
- Edward “Ted” Frantz is a professor of history and chair of the Department of History and Political Science at the University of Indianapolis.
- Cynthia Stark is a professor of philosophy and department chair at the University of Utah who works on feminist, political and moral philosophy. Several of her recent publications are on gaslighting.
- Graham Parsons is a visiting professor at Vassar College and an adjunct lecturer at the Bard Prison Initiative. For several years he served as the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl coach for the U.S. Military Academy, Westpoint.
The panel will be moderated by longtime APPE member and former APPE board chair Lisa M. Lee. Lisa is the senior associate vice president for research and innovation at Virginia Tech.
Pre-Conference Sessions
Registration for Pre-Conference Sessions are separate than the conference registration. You can register for the conference and the pre-conferences at the same time, or separately.
APPE RISE Pre-Conference Workshop
Theme: Mentoring
Thursday, March 5, 2026 | 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Includes light breakfast (coffee and pastries, fruit) plus lunch.
The 2026 APPE RISE Pre-Conference Workshop will focus on mentoring in research. Participants will learn about various successful mentoring program curricula, best practices, and tools for fostering effective mentoring relationships. The program will feature invited sessions that demonstrate specific approaches to mentor education or share tools that might be helpful in mentor education. This year’s workshop will also feature a roundtable session, in which selected presenters will share information about a mentoring curriculum, tool, or strategy, followed by a discussion with all workshop attendees. The remainder of the workshop will be devoted to breakout sessions, where presenters will work with participants to develop and adapt ideas and tools for use in their institutions. Attendees will leave the workshop with a template of options to use in building and improving their mentoring program.
Member Rate
$115*
Non-Member Rate
$150*
Student Rate
$40*
*A 3.5% credit card fee will be added.
Use NOFEE promo code if paying by check or EFT.
Ethics Center Directors Summit
Theme: Demonstrating the Effectiveness of Ethics Centers
Thursday, March 5, 2026 | 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Includes light breakfast (coffee and pastries, fruit) plus lunch.
Ethics Center Directors engage in an extraordinary amount of work and provide a valuable service for their campuses and communities. Sometimes this work takes the form of ethics education within individual classes and degree programs. Sometimes this work occurs in spaces adjacent to the classroom, through residence life and student affairs programming, campus-wide orientation, or other co-curricular learning experiences such as service-learning or internships. And sometimes it takes the form of community engagement and outreach, through extensive events and programs for specific audiences, topics and needs—ranging from summer camps to workshops at community libraries. Given the broad nature of the work, demonstrating the effectiveness of our efforts requires collecting various types of data, developing specialized reports, and thinking through the interests of audiences that provide various forms of administrative, academic, programmatic, and funding support for our work. This year, we focus on the specific types of data and methods that can be deployed to demonstrate empirically—and persuasively—the effectiveness of our work.
Member Rate
$115*
Non-Member Rate
$150*
A 3.5% credit card fee will be added.
Use NOFEE promo code if paying by check or EFT.
Designing Your Ethics Course: From Planning to Assessment
Thursday, March 5, 2026 | 9 a.m. - Noon
Includes light snacks, no meals.
Whether you are planning curriculum for your first-time teaching ethics or looking for new ideas after decades of teaching, this workshop is for you. Cara Biasucci and Deni Elliott, Project Co-Directors for the National Ethics Project (NEP), will help you get clear on your goals for ethics education and help you accomplish them. Participants will leave the workshop with student learning objectives, activities to help students accomplish objectives, and assessment techniques that enable instructors to know what their students achieved. Regardless of discipline or venue, this 3-hour workshop is appropriate for those who teach ethics currently or who intend to teach. Limited to 25 participants.
Rate
$25*
All attendees pay the same rate.
A 3.5% credit card fee will be added.
Use NOFEE promo code if paying by check or EFT.
Green Dot Bystander Intervention Training
Thursday, March 5, 2026 | 1 - 4 p.m.
Includes light snacks, no meals.
Green Dot is an active bystander intervention program designed to foster two community-wide norms: (1) Power-based personal violence is not okay, and (2) Everyone has a role to play in prevention. Through a research-based training model, participants are engaged in meaningful conversation about non-sexual and sexual violence, while also gaining practical tools and strategies to safely and effectively intervene in ways that feel authentic and manageable. Together, these “green dots” add up to a culture where everyone can live free from violence and fear.
Heather Wright serves as the Director of CARE at DePauw University, where she leads efforts in violence prevention as a member of the Green Dot Team and student support. She is dedicated to fostering a safe and inclusive campus community by empowering students, providing resources, and promoting proactive approaches to well-being.
Member Rate
FREE
Non-Member Rate
$25*
A 3.5% credit card fee will be added.
Use NOFEE promo code if paying by check or EFT.