The theme of the 2026 SoTL Symposium is Brave Scholarship: SoTL as Practice, Intervention, and Influence. At a moment when higher education - and the world at large - are experiencing profound uncertainty and transformation, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning offers a powerful space for courageous inquiry and collective action. Across higher education, scholars of teaching and learning are increasingly called upon to work with courage—asking difficult questions, experimenting with new pedagogies, and challenging assumptions about how learning happens. Our 2026 Symposium theme recognizes SoTL as a space where inquiry, reflection, and community come together to support meaningful change in teaching and learning.

This theme encourages participants to explore how SoTL can function as a powerful act of intentional practice, intervention, and influence. Through systematic inquiry into teaching and learning, SoTL scholars examine how educational environments shape what is possible for students and educators alike. The 2026 SoTL Symposium invites us to consider how SoTL can act as both an intellectual response to turbulent times and a form of scholarly resistance and reform—generating knowledge that challenges assumptions, opening new possibilities for learning, and strengthening the role of higher education as a space for curiosity, creativity, and critical thought.

Proposals are encouraged from students, faculty, staff, administrators, and community partners committed to advancing scholarly inquiry into teaching and learning. We welcome submissions that demonstrate collaborative approaches across disciplines, institutions, and communities, particularly those that engage students as partners in inquiry. While submissions across all areas of SoTL are invited, preference will be given to proposals that resonate with the symposium theme.