We’re working with College Unbound at the conference to provide new opportunities for connection, mentorship, and even college credit.
College Unbound is a nontraditional, student-driven institution of higher education for adult learners that serves as a model for imagining new forms of partnership, shared authority, care, and learning together.
At College Unbound, sitting down to eat together isn’t a break from the coursework. Conversation, relationship, the exchange of knowledge across a table: it’s built into the model rather than scheduled around it. So when we started planning what a CU partnership might look like in Chicago, the shape of it followed naturally: two dinners and a way to earn credit.
Thursday, October 22 from 6:00-8:30 pm
Adams Room, Palmer House Hotel
Tickets: $100 each; includes a three-course dinner, the Improvising Institutions program, and the celebration of this year’s ASA award and prize winners
We open the conference over a shared meal with a conversation about different interventions that are reimagining the landscape of higher education at this political moment.
How can we create educational institutions, spaces for deep learning and experiences that respond to the complexity, creativity, and aspirations of the communities they serve?
The setting over dinner is intentional. At College Unbound, shared meals are part of the structure of learning, creating space for conversation, relationship, and the exchange of knowledge.
Improvising Institutions brings together longtime ASA member Adam Bush, President of College Unbound; Bill Ayers, faculty at College Unbound; Cathy Cohen, D. Gale Johnson Distinguished Service Professor of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago; and College Unbound students from Chicago to explore what higher education can become when those too often excluded from its institutions become co-creators of them.
We anchor our conversation with an exploration of College Unbound—a nontraditional, student-driven institution of higher education for adult learners that serves as a model for imagining new forms of partnership, shared authority, care, and learning together.
Bill Ayers will be in conversation with his students about the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning and the ways educational relationships can unsettle traditional hierarchies of expertise and authority.
Cathy Cohen will then offer reflections to inform a dinner conversation about how innovative interventions, such as Scholars for Social Justice’s “Open Universities” and other campus and community learning initiatives across our institutions help us all improvise new forms of teaching and learning in these times.
The conversation takes place as part of the ASA’s ticketed Opening Night Dinner, which also celebrates the Association’s annual award and prize winners.
Saturday, October 24 at 6:30 pm
Off-Site in Chicago, Illinois
Tickets: $20 each; limited to current graduate students
Join us the evening of Saturday, October 24, for dinner, conversation, and mentoring in the homes of longtime ASA members and friends in Chicago. These small gatherings take inspiration from College Unbound, where shared meals are part of a model of learning that treats conversation, relationship, and community as essential to education.
Choose between two extraordinary host groups:
Adam Bush and Lisa Yun Lee: Bush is co-founder and President of College Unbound, an innovative, student-driven college built around the idea that learning is collective and rooted in people’s lives and communities. Lee is Executive Director of Chicago’s National Public Housing Museum and Associate Professor of Public Culture and Museum Studies at UIC, where she teaches in Art History, Museum and Exhibition Studies, and Gender and Women’s Studies. A scholar, cultural activist, and leader of public-facing institutions, she works at the intersection of museums, public history, arts and culture, housing justice, and democratic practice. Together, Bush and Lee offer a chance to talk about scholarship that moves beyond the university—and about building institutions that put ambitious ideas about education, culture, and social change into practice.
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn: Ayers is a longtime educator, activist, and retired Distinguished Professor of Education at UIC who now teaches at College Unbound, where he continues his decades-long work exploring teaching, democracy, social justice, and education. Dohrn is a lawyer, educator, and longtime advocate for children and young people who founded Northwestern Law’s Children and Family Justice Center and spent more than two decades working in juvenile justice, law reform, and the mentoring of students and young advocates. Their dinner offers a rare opportunity for an intimate conversation about education, activism, scholarship, political commitment, and building a life around the work you care about.
Program: There’s no formal program; just come ready to eat, talk, ask questions, hear stories, and have the kinds of conversations about scholarship, teaching, institutions, activism, careers, and life that rarely fit into a conference session.
Location: Dinner will be held in our hosts’ homes in the same apartment building near the Obama Presidential Center. Exact location and other details will be provided to registered participants.
The Fine Print: Space is limited to 20 graduate students per dinner, so sign up early. Tickets are $20, with all proceeds going toward a fund to support graduate student dinners at future ASA conferences. Because these gatherings take place in private homes and space is extremely limited, tickets are nonrefundable; however, you may give your spot to another graduate student if you are unable to attend.
For the first time, conference attendees will have the opportunity to earn undergraduate academic credit for participating in the ASA Annual Meeting through College Unbound. College Unbound is a fully accredited institution, and its credits are transferable to other colleges and universities. Additional details about requirements, registration, and credit transfer will be available soon.