Ganders Lecture Series

The Harry S. and Elva K. Ganders Memorial Lecture Series remembers Harry S. Ganders, the School of Education’s fourth Dean (who oversaw the transformation of the Teachers College into the “All University” School of Education) and his wife. The lecture was established by the Ganders’ daughters and is also supported by alumni and other contributions to the Harry S. and Elva K. Ganders Memorial Fund.

The series offers lectures, workshops, performances, demonstrations, and other academic opportunities for students and faculty—as well as the broader campus and local community—to explore the intersections of the School of Education’s Signatures Areas of Distinction in inclusive, digital, and experiential pedagogy and practice.

Events are free and open to the public and CART open captioning is provided. More details are available on each event listing.

Fall 2025—The Logic of Creativity: Music, Mathematics, and Expression

Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025
4-5:45 p.m.
Hendricks Chapel

The School of Education and Hendricks Chapel host accomplished pianist, composer, and mathematician Eugenia Cheng (currently Scientist in Residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago).

In a piano performance and lecture showcasing math’s creative side, Cheng will demonstrate how math is pivotal to solving complex everyday problems and advancing social justice. Reception to follow.

Previous Lectures

Spring 2025—Working Towards Racial Justice and Educational Equity Through Youth Engaged, Justice-Oriented Literacy and Learning

Keisha L. Green (University of Massachusetts-Amherst) revisits one of bell hook’s influential texts—Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom—as a way to (re)connect and (re)commit to a justice-oriented, community-based, and youth-engaged liberatory project of teaching and learning in the context of today’s political climate and culture wars.

Fall 2024—Autistic and Black: Calling for Intersectional Understandings of Neurodiversity

As a Black autistic woman writing at the intersection of race, culture, and autism, Kala Allen Omeiza discusses lessons and insights we can draw from BIPOC neurodivergent individuals, inspired by her acclaimed book Autistic and Black: Our Experiences of Growth, Progress, and Empowerment (2024, Jessica Kingsley Publishers).

Spring 2024—Noticing Noise, Noisy Noticings: Sound as the Content and Context for Learning

From queer youth navigating the sounds and silences of homophobia to the sounds of embodied learning in a Pre-K STEAM unit to the social interactions of undergraduates engaged in an immersive escape room game, Jon M. Wargo invites us to notice sound as a material and a design resource for learning and to explore the cultural politics of noise.

Fall 2023—Making Space: Minoritized Youth as Creators and Makers of Change

Edna Tan focuses on ways that STEM-rich makerspaces and digital tools/technologies can be generative spaces for minoritized youth to use STEM-based knowledge for creative expression, to foster community and belonging, and as a means to work collectively on “problems worth solving” (Tan, 2017).

Fall 2022—Grasping at the Roots of Ecofascism

Joseph Henderson and Stephanie Morningstar discuss the settler colonial and capitalist roots of this crisis; how they root themselves in place to understand the long histories and structures that allow ecofascism to flourish; and how to create radical, solidaristic educational projects that produce more joy and less suffering in the world.