Dear CSU 2020 Symposium on Teaching and Learning Presenters, Participants, and Other Friends:

With a great deal of disappointment, we have cancelled the CSU Symposium on Teaching and Learning that CSU Fullerton originally planned to host on March 13-14, 2020, and which had been tentatively rescheduled for September 25-26, 2020.

When we decided in March 2020 to postpone the symposium to September, we were hoping for the best.

Now, as the pandemic continues, we must devote much of our attention to teaching and learning in new modalities. Moreover, in light of the CSU’s decision to move to a virtual mode for systemwide meetings and conferences and to eliminate all non-essential international and domestic travel through June 30, 2021, we cannot hold the symposium we had planned in the fall or the spring of the 2020-2021 academic year.

Let us once again express our deep appreciation for you: the proposals submitted for the IDEAS symposium, and the robust registration (we were expecting over 370 to attend), attest to the wonderful and creative work you were doing every day, prior to the pandemic, and they illustrate the dedication to student success that keeps us learning as we keep teaching through it.

·       To acknowledge the work of scheduled presenters, abstracts will remain on the IDEAS symposium website.

·       All registration fees have been refunded.

We also want to thank the team at Fullerton that was prepared to host a terrific symposium, and the members and friends of the CSU Faculty Development Council who served as reviewers.

The educational development community within the CSU, in California, and across the country has been working relentlessly since March: first to support the astonishingly quick pivot and now to carefully plan for remote teaching and learning this fall. The attention to promoting active, authentic learning online while attending to equity is truly inspiring.

Should we have time and capacity, we will consider a hosting a virtual conference in the coming year. IDEAS -- inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and student success -- will surely continue to be themes, as will what we are learning at this extraordinary moment about teaching equitably and inclusively in new modalities. Whether virtually this year, or in person in the future, we look forward to seeing you at the next CSU Symposium on Teaching and Learning.

Take good care,

Emily Daniell Magruder, Director, Institute for Teaching and Learning, CSU Office of the Chancellor

Erica Bowers, Director, Faculty Development Center, CSU Fullerton (Host Campus)