Keynote and Featured Presentations

Wednesday, April 21
11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Luncheon, Keynote Presentation, and Awards Ceremony
Masters Ballroom DE

"Creativity Is a Decision"
Robert J. Sternberg
Creativity Researcher, Tufts University

Students are often taught subject matter in college in a way that emphasizes memorizing material. At least as important as memorizing is thinking critically, but at least as important as thinking critically is thinking creatively. In this session, Dr. Sternberg will present tips for how to guide students to think creatively based on the notion that, ultimately, creativity is a decision.

Thursday, April 22
11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Luncheon and Keynote Presentation
TBD

"Wicked Patterns of Creativity"
Gregory Maguire
Author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Best known for his reimagining of classic fairy tales, Gregory Maguire is a prolific writer of both adult and children’s books. In each of his works, Maguire creates a rich and vivid fantasy world that enthralls and fascinates and which often spawns new characters and adventures. Join us for a discussion of the creative processes of writing and re-imagining that make up the many worlds of Gregory Maguire.

Featured Presentations

"Kay Ryan: A Poetry Reading With Commentary"
Kay Ryan
United States Poet Laureate

Join us for a unique opportunity to experience a poetry reading by United States Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. Her poems have been described as “compact, exhilarating, strange affairs, like Erik Satie miniatures or Joseph Cornell boxes . . . . an anomaly in today’s literary culture: as intense and elliptical as Dickinson, as buoyant and rueful as Frost.“ Ryan, who sees herself as an unlikely laureate, will share some of her works and a little of her lifelong infatuation with language.

"How to Be Creative: Let Me Count the Ways"
Gregory J. Feist
San José State University

Creativity is a precondition for success in many domains of life, not just the arts. Science, engineering, business, and education would hardly be what they are without really creative people, ideas, and solutions. This presentation will summarize what the empirical and theoretical literatures tell us about how to be creative.

“Learning, Video Games, and Brain Plasticity”
C. Shawn Green
University of Minnesota

As video games have grown in mass popularity, so too has scientific interest in the behavioral and neural consequences of video game play. Given the extraordinary demands these games place on the perceptual and motor systems, they constitute a sort of “natural experiment” on the effects of greater than normal sensory experience. As there is no “a priori” way for subjects entering an experiment to know what to expect, these outcomes must be learned via experience with the task, suggesting that what video game experience actually teaches is “how to learn.”

Featured Presentation Speaker Competition

We are excited to offer Conference participants a chance to compete for the opportunity to be a Featured Speaker at the Conference. The selected presentation will be highlighted in the Conference Program, on the Conference Website, and in the Final Call for Papers, which will be released in January. Please go to the Call for Papers page for additional information.