Plenary Session + Reception | January 7 | 3pm - 6pm Breakout Sessions + Lunch | January 8 | 9am - 2pm
Wednesday, January 7, 2026 | 3pm - 5pm
Plenary Session with Amy Baldwin!
From Setbacks to Success: Reframing Failure for Student Growth and Resilience
What can we do as educators to help students embrace failure as a powerful catalyst for growth? Drawing from current research on learning mindsets, we will focus on proven strategies to shift undergraduate and graduate students from "failure-phobic" to authentic confidence. Attendees will learn innovative strategies for fostering resilience and growth mindsets to help all levels of students learn from setbacks and achieve deeper, more sustainable success.
Faculty members are teachers, researchers, writers, mentors, colleagues, administrators, collaborators, artists, activists, and humans. During a single day, we may play all of these roles at some time, and sometimes we play multiple roles at once. Some of these roles overlap with and reinforce each other, while others challenge us with their conflicting demands. Like our students, we also negotiate identities and experiences related to power and social inequities. Sparking Success seeks to uplift and inspire faculty by enriching our multi-faceted lives.
Plenary Speaker
Amy Baldwin, Ed.D. is a the First-Year Seminar Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in the Student Transitions department at the University of Central Arkansas where she served as the chair of the department for seven years. Prior to her roles at UCA, she spent 18 years working with community college students, which led to her the first textbook for two-year college students The Community College Experience (Pearson). Her research and writing focuses on student success topics such as belonging, resilience, engagement, and transition. Amy is the author of OpenStax' College Success, College Success Concise, and Preparing for College Success and a co-author of Promoting Belonging, Growth Mindset, and Resilience to Foster Student Success (Stylus). She also serves up teaching strategies on Instagram @thecuriousprofessor.
Sparking Success | Sponsors
- Center for Public Service
- Connolly Alexander Institute For Data Science
- Goldman Center for Student Accessibility
- Newcomb -Tulane College
- Phyllis M. Taylor Center
- School of Architecture
- A. B. Freeman School of Business
- School of Law
- School of Liberal Arts
- School of Medicine
- School of Professional Advancement
- Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine
- School of Science & Engineering
- School of Social Work
- Tulane Libraries
- Wave of Support