University of North Texas Dallas Campus

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Symposium for community college accounting professors is Feb. 8

DALLAS – The University of North Texas Dallas Campus will hold a symposium for community college accounting professors at the campus in Southern Dallas from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Friday, Feb. 8.

The semiannual symposium, which drew 50 accounting professors from across the North Texas region last year, will this month focus on excellence in online teaching, according to Dennis Elam, assistant professor of accounting at the UNT Dallas Campus and the organizer of the conference.

“To my knowledge, this is the one and only event of its kind solely for the community college accounting teacher in the entire state of Texas,” Elam said. “It shows teachers are interested in networking together with their peers and are interested in classroom best practices.”

Elam said this symposium will feature all UNT personnel who will discuss “distributed learning,” or distance education via the Internet.

There is no charge for the symposium, and a continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. CPAs will earn four hours of CPE. Sponsors of the symposium include Cengage, Pearson, Wiley, HR Block, CITI, and several others.

Derrick D’Souza, professor of management in the College of Business Administration at the UNT flagship in Denton, will present a vision for moving the classroom to the Internet. D’Souza has participated in the creation of the Online MBA program at UNT.

Barbara Altman, assistant professor of management and interim deputy vice provost at the UNT Dallas Campus, will speak to concerns about effective delivery of business curriculums online. Altman’s solution is the hybrid or “blended instruction” class.  She teaches the popular class in the MBA program at UNT Dallas and will bring her experience to symposium.  

Other components of the symposium will include:

• Jennie Hoffman, who has worked for five years as an instructional designer with the Center for Distributed Learning (CDL) at UNT, will discuss “Altering Asynchronous Discussion Using Blogging and Peer Review.” 
• Michelle E. Farley, who teaches online courses, will discuss “Student Motivation and Engagement” via online learning.  Michelle has been an instruction technology coordinator at a regional community college in New Mexico.  She currently works as an instructional designer with the CDL in Denton.
• Julie Navar, who has taught both music and technology in the K-12 classroom, will present “Creating Content and Engaging Learning Environments.”  She is an instructional designer for the CDL in Denton.

Learn more at http://www.professorelam.typepad.com/ccats. RSVP  by emailing Dennis Elam at dennis.elam@unt.edu.

The UNT Dallas Campus, which operates under the authority of the University of North Texas in Denton, currently offers junior-, senior- and graduate-level courses leading to bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Once freestanding, the University of North Texas at Dallas will begin recruiting its first freshman class for admission in fall 2009.

For More Information:
Gregory Tomlin
Director of Marketing, News and Information
(972) 780-3615
(817) 798-9260 (Cell)
greg.tomlin@unt.edu