The Office of the Dean of Research (DOR) held a webinar titled, “Departmental Colloquia: Informational Session”, the tenth of the Bethlehem University Research Group series for the 2021-2022 academic year, on Thursday, 3 March 2022.
Prof. Jamil Khader, Dean of Research, provided an overview of the main research activities that are planned for this semester. He noted that every Department at Bethlehem University will hold its own symposium or study day titled, “New Directions in the Field,” in which department faculty and graduate students, if possible, will present short working papers (3-4 pages) or posters that seek to highlight current theoretical, pedagogical, and practical developments in the field.
In these events, which should be open to students, faculty will showcase innovative approaches in research and teaching in the context of recent scholarship and debates in the field and interact and exchange knowledge and experiences with each other.
These departmental colloquia will lead to a university-level Research & Innovation Day, which will be held on 11 May 2022. On this day, faculty members will present high-quality research papers that were first developed for the departmental symposia.
Research and Innovation Day is a major research activity at Bethlehem University in which we celebrate faculty research and showcase it to the university community and other interested members from the academy and community. Research Day will also create spaces for critical exchanges and dialogues among the faculty and encourage collaboration across disciplines.
Faculty from various disciplines across the university attended the webinar. In the discussion, it was suggested that faculty can work on a topic that has been suggested in the conference call for papers. This way faculty can develop a paper that can target wider audiences. It was also recommended that the discussion will not only focus on the personal experience, but must be related to and situated in the literature on the topic.