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Building Anew: Anchoring Student Success in a Divided Landscape

Friday Breakfast Roundtables

Table 9: Forged in Crisis: Strategies for Building a Responsive General Education Program

Friday, January 23, 2026
8:00 AM - 9:15 AM East Coast USA Time
Location: Marquis Salon 5 - Level M2

    Primary Presenter(s)

  • Liza Flood

    Assistant Professor
    University of Virginia, United States

    • Co-Presenter(s)

  • BO

    Bo Odom

    Assistant Dean and Director of Academic Initiatives
    University of Virginia, United States

  • WS

    Wendy Smith

    Assistant Professor
    University of Virginia, United States

  • JS

    Janet Spittler

    Professor of Religious Studies and Co-Director of the Engagements Program
    University of Virginia

The backdrop of divisive political turmoil that colleges and universities have navigated for the past decade reached several crisis points at the University of Virginia (UVA): the Unite the Right rally in 2017, which featured neo-Nazis marching across our campus; the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic; a deadly 2022 campus shooting; and the 2025 forced resignation of President Jim Ryan by the U.S. Department of Justice. This series of crises maps on to the short history of the Engagements Program, UVA’s new first-year general education curriculum that launched just days after the Unite the Right rally. This roundtable will address the structural components that have allowed us to be a stabilizing force during our short, rocky existence. Our goal is for attendees to find transferable, practical ideas and pedagogical principles that will impact their own curricular and institutional work, helping them build more resilient academic communities.