Seminars 2025-26

In this three-day seminar you will be introduced to various kinds of prints and will learn how to use the new, easy to use and clean water-soluble inks (AKUA) in your classrooms. Printmaking is a marvelous introduction to other art forms as it stimulates both creative and analytical problem solving. We will start with trace monotypes, and move on through stencils and viscosity monotype, to exploring various ways to achieve variety and texture by making collographs. I emphasize experimentation and encourage investigation of personal imagery. Please note that even if you don’t have access to a press in your classrooms, you will learn techniques that can be used without equipment. Teachers of all subjects and grade levels are welcomed and encouraged to enroll. The seminar will be conducted in Randy’s Somerville Mix-It Studio in Davis Square. 

Randy Garber, Artist
Location: Mix-It Studio, Somerville
Dates Oct. 31, Nov. 4, & Nov. 13, 2025; 9:30am-3pm.

RANDY GARBER’s art practice is divided between her studio in Somerville, MA and the Mixit Print Studio also in Somerville, MA. She teaches printmaking at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and is a recipient of many artist awards and grants including a 2023 Fellowship Award in printmaking from the Mass Cultural Council, the Traveling Fellowship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and awards from the Puffin Foundation, St. Botolph Foundation, and Somerville Artists Grants. Randy’s work can be found in museum, corporate, and private collections including The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum, the Boston Athenaeum, The Boston Public Library, the Children’s Hospital, Karp Cancer Research Building, and the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Portland, ME. Recent solo and group exhibitions of her work include the Currier Art Museum, Lesley University, Simmons College, Sage College of Albany, DeCordova Museum, Boston Convention Center, and the Dishman Art Museum in Beaumont, Texas. Her most recent solo exhibition was ( “Scrip(t) Scraps) at Kingston Gallery, Boston. Visit her website at: www.Randygarber.com.

This three-day seminar offers an intimate look at theater-in-action at Boston’s leading professional company. Through discussions with the artists and artisans responsible for producing, designing and managing a full-scale production, participants will gain valuable insight into the theatrical process. Participants will attend three matinee productions, all at the Huntington Theatre: 

1. SARDINES Nov. 6, 2025
   Fresh from a celebrated run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Sardines explores – with tremendous grace and humanity – the tragic, hilarious, and important questions of our time: Can we enjoy life if we know how it ends? Does making art actually help? And if Rihanna’s song is called ‘Don’t Stop the Music’, why does the music… stop? Find out in this deliciously authentic, insightful, and laugh–out–loud show created and performed by actor-comedian Chris Grace (TV’s Superstore, Dropout’s Chris Grace: as Scarlett Johansson).
2. FUN HOME December 5, 2025
   Winner of five Tony Awards including Best Musical, Fun Home is a beloved, groundbreaking, and emotionally rich story of seeing your parents through grown-up eyes. Based on Alison Bechdel’s best-selling graphic memoir, the musical traces Alison through childhood, college, and adulthood, as she unravels her complex relationship with a brilliant, volatile, and closeted father. How have the mysteries of her father’s life shaped her own understanding of love and self-acceptance? With a soaring score by Jeanine Tesori and a sharp, heartfelt book by Lisa Kron, Fun Home is a beautiful, can’t-miss theatrical experience, directed by Logan Ellis.
3. WE HAD A WORLD  February 27, 2026
   A dying woman calls her grandson and asks him to write a play about their family. “But I want you to promise me something,” she says. “Make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible.” In this searing, funny, and deeply personal play, the author of Prayer for the French Republic recreates thirty years of family fights, monstrous behavior, enduring love, and unexpected dishes of home-cooked spaetzle.

Marisa Jones, Huntington Theatre Co.
Dates: November 6, December 5, 2025 and February 27, 2026
Location: The Huntington Theatre and the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston.

NOTE: We ask participants to attend at least two of the three days of this seminar.

MARISA JONES: With a B.F.A. from Emerson College and Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Marisa Jones joined the Education Department at the Huntington Theatre Company in 2002. As a long-standing member of the Huntington’s Department of Education, Marisa facilitates and manages multiple programs while serving as a director, writer and teaching artist. Marisa currently serves as the department’s Associate Director of Education and Workforce Development.

What happens when we gather before a work of art? How do we view and understand it? This two-day seminar for teachers of all subjects and ages, held at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, will introduce participants to the Museum’s learner-centered approach to teaching visual art. Participants will learn about and practice Visual Thinking Strategies, a research-based method for facilitating discussions that make art accessible to all students and allow their ideas and perspectives to take center stage. We will reflect on the benefits of using Visual Thinking Strategies in the classroom across disciplines and grade levels. Learning will take place primarily in the galleries. Teachers of all subjects and grade levels are encouraged to enroll, no prior experience with art is required.

Claire Tratnyek, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Location: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Dates: December 11 & 18, 2025; 9:30am-3pm.

CLAIRE TRATNYEK is a museum educator, education researcher, and social historian interested in providing teachers and students with opportunities for robust dialogic engagement with visual culture and local histories.   As the Director of School and Teaching Programs at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Claire draws on her background as a classroom teacher in Boston Public Schools to connect students and teachers with the museum’s collections.  Claire holds a BA in History and Anthropology from Franklin Pierce College, a MA in History and a MA in Teaching from Northeastern University, and is currently a PhD candidate in History at Northeastern University.

In this workshop, we will be inspired by examples of types of journaling (Nature Journaling, Illustrated Daily Life Journaling, Travel Journaling, Garden Journals, Idea Journaling, Zentangles and Patterns, etc.) and how you might incorporate visual learning with your students. Most of the class will focus on actual watercolor painting, mixed media, drawing, lettering and composition techniques with some writing prompts for those interested in combining images and text in their journals. We will explore color mixing in watercolor and create abstract landscapes, and hone our observational skills making a pattern and color record of our individual surroundings. We will also learn the benefits of doodling and explore patterns and creating depth in your sketches in various ways. This workshop is meant to be a jumping off point for those who want to reignite their journaling practice and also for those who are new to artmaking. We’ll tie all of this into ways to incorporate the benefits or drawing and journaling with your students in all disciplines. If starting from scratch, participants should expect to spend between $25-$45 on supplies, including a watercolor paper journal.

Miranda Loud, Artist
Location: Online
Dates: February 6 & 13, 2026; 9:00am-3pm with humane breaks from screen.

MIRANDA LOUD is a multimedia artist producing works in a variety of media: video, painting, collage, photography and music. She has held fellowships at the Banff Center for the Arts in Banff, Canada, the St. Botolph Club of Boston and, among a variety of awards, won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Gold Star Award for her multimedia performance Buccaneers of Buzz: Celebrating the Honeybee which was performed as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. Her work is available at www.mirandaloudartist.com.

The American dream as a coinage and a concept first appeared in the early 1930s, coinciding with the consolidation of the American film industry. Since then, Hollywood movies have been a major force in embedding the notion of the American dream in our individual aspirations, our public discourse, and our collective consciousness. Films from the last century have offered varied perspectives on this very essence of our national self-image— sometimes extolling and sometimes challenging the premises and promises of the American dream. This seminar will consider a wide array of movies from across the decades that narrativize the dream’s hopes and betrayals.  Film viewing will be supplemented by readings on cultural history as we explore the ideology and endurance of the American dream.

Julie Levinson, Babson College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: April 10 and 17, 2026; 9:30am-3pm.

JULIE LEVINSON is Professor of Film at Babson College where she holds the William R. Dill endowed chair. She is the author of The American Success Myth on Film, editor of Alexander Payne: Interviews, and co-editor of Acting: Behind the Silver Screen. Her publications in journals and edited collections focus on a range of topics including genre and gender, documentary film, cultural representations of work, metafiction, and narrative theory. She has been a film curator for arts institutions including Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Boston Film/Video Foundation, the Flaherty Film Seminar and the Celebration of Black Cinema. She has served as an editorial consultant for documentary films, as a film festival programmer, and as a panelist for organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Julie is currently working on a book titled Cities of Lost Children: Street Kid Films and the Urban Imaginary in Global Cinema.

AI often promises to boost productivity by providing shortcuts. But in the classroom, shortcuts can undermine the slow, messy, and reflective process that is essential for deep and authentic learning. 

In this two-day workshop, we will explore how AI can be used to slow down the learning process in order to foster deeper engagement. Through a mix of close reading and creative writing activities, we’ll consider how AI can help students enrich their understanding, refine (or challenge) their ideas, and engage more thoughtfully with their work. During the workshop, attendees will participate in a variety of creative, reflective and analytical exercises designed to uncover how AI can be used in thoughtful and imaginative ways. Our main goal will be to shift how we think about the use of AI in schools, focusing on process-tivity over productivity.

While this workshop will be geared toward English classes, teachers of all disciplines are welcome to attend.

Ben Berman, author and teacher, Brookline High School
Location: Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square.
Dates: October 29 & November 5, 2025

BEN BERMAN is the author of three books of poems and the collection of essays, Writing While Parenting, a 2023 Times Literary Supplement Best Book of the Year. He has won the Peace Corps Award for the Best Book of Poetry, has twice been shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Awards and has received awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, New England Poetry Club and Somerville Arts Council. He’s been teaching high school for over twenty-five years and currently teaches at Brookline High School.

Percival Everett’s, James. Barbara Kingsolver’s, Demon Copperhead. Madeline Miller’s, The Song of the Arrow and Circe. Retellings are having their day. In this seminar, we will investigate and then practice some of the techniques authors use to reimagine classic tales. Along the way, we will ask ourselves what makes a work of fiction stand out. In other words, what are the elements of good writing? Participants should come to the seminar with material they would like to explore in their own retellings. A fairy tale or myth. A classic novel. Even the biography of a real or fictional character will do.  No previous experience writing necessary. The only pre-requisites are curiosity, good will, and an open heart. A sense of humor helps, too. Please read David Malouf’s incredible novel, Ransom, in preparation for our work together.

David Elliott, author
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: November 7 & 14, 2025

DAVID ELLIOTT is the New York Times Bestselling author of over 35 books for children, including the picture books, And Here’s To You (illustrated by Randy Cecil), Baabwaa and Wooliam (illustrated by Melissa Sweet), and most recently, Boar and Hedgehog (illustrated by Eugene Yelchin.) He is also the author of three critically acclaimed YA novels-in-verse: Bull, a retelling of the myth of The Minotaur; Voices, a reimagining of the life of Joan of Arc; and The Seventh Raven, a retelling of a Grimm’s tale. David was also a founding mentor of Lesley University’s Low Residency Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, where he taught for twenty years.

This two-day seminar grows out of a long collaboration between an English professor and an English Education professor, who tackle questions of what it means to teach literature in general and American literature in particular in 2025, as interest in the humanities wanes as a site for teaching and learning, and as rising nationalism in the US confronts a range of social movements that push us toward equity. This seminar will explore what it means to make determinations about what sorts of objects of study qualify as literature, what makes them American (or not), what sorts of texts are worth exploring and teaching, how we might approach the task of teaching American literature with young people, and how to confront the challenges of representing diverse genres, historical periods, identities, and beliefs in an American literature course. This seminar will include units on curricular organization, representation, engagement, and assessment, with a focus on broader questions to consider when making practical classroom decisions. We will work at various scales (from social and historical contexts, to pedagogical theory and tactics, to textual explication). Class activities will include discussion (in different formats), in-class projects (individual and group), reading (in-class and outside). There should also be time to talk about college readiness and compare the teaching of English at the high school and college levels.

Christina Dobbs and Maurice Lee, Boston University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: 9:30am-3pm.

CHRISTINA L. DOBBS is associate professor and program director in English Education for Equity and Justice at the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development at Boston University.  She studies critical disciplinary literacy, teacher learning and preparation and organizational change, and her most recent book is Disciplinary Inquiry and Instruction, 2nd edition.  She collaborates with Professor Mo Lee to work with future teachers in English/language arts.

MAURICE S. LEE is Professor of English at Boston University, where he publishes and teaches nineteenth-century American literature. He has edited the Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, and his most recent book is Overwhelmed: Literature, Aesthetics, and the Nineteenth-Century Information Revolution. With Professor Christina Dobbs, he teaches courses training undergraduate and graduate students to be high school ELA teachers.

What scares, shocks, and repulses us says a lot about who we are as individuals and as a society. So, what scared, shocked, and repulsed the ancient Greeks and Romans? This seminar examines Greek and Roman horror stories through four different themes: bodies, gender, disease, and spectacle.

Each theme will introduce a different set of ancient stories, revealing the perennial nature of human fears even as we probe the unique historical and social contexts that gave rise to these stories. Monstrous and atypical bodies (cyclopes, werewolves, dwarves) show us how people in antiquity thought about far-away and otherwise unknown places, while witches and child-hunting ghosts represent fears closer to home. Plague narratives offer timeless responses to social and political change, while real-life horror in the gladiator’s arena reveals the unsettling ubiquity of violence in the ancient world.

By studying these stories, seminar participants will walk away with a richer understanding of antiquity’s “others” – women, foreigners, slaves – and the ways in which those in power capitalized on fear and disgust to maintain social order.

Rebecca Moorman, Boston University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 6 & 13, 2026; 9:30am-3pm.

REBECCA MOORMAN is Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University, where she teaches courses on Greek and Latin language as well as Roman literature, culture, and philosophy. Her research focuses on Latin poetry and Roman philosophy, especially the aesthetics of emotion and multisensory experience in the ancient world. She is currently working on a book, The Allure of Disgust in Ancient Rome: Knowledge, Poetics, and the Senses, which explores the role of disgust in Roman philosophical literature. With Lorenza Bennardo at the University of Toronto, she also runs “Overlooked,” an international scholarly network studying poverty and marginality in the ancient world.

Every day, in hallways and classrooms, high school teachers can witness the primary and formative nature of friendships during adolescence. Likewise, literary characters are often driven by the riddles and rewards of connection, or its lack. So, exploring literature through the lens of friendship is a powerful way for students to examine friendship critically and collectively, even as they’re in the thick of it developmentally.

What can we learn about identity, connection, and intimacy by studying friendships within literature? How do literary and irl friendships behave and travel across culture, gender, race, and social class? Through close reading, case studies, writing, and discussion, we will look at the story (and stories) of friendship and explore our evolving conceptions of features like loyalty, belonging, reciprocity, and power dynamics. We’ll draw on our own experiences– as readers, teachers, and friends–and borrow a bit from new and ancient conceptual frameworks from a range of thinkers (Aristotle, hooks, Maslow), research, and social theory. Teachers will come away from this two-day seminar with ideas and resources to help their students become more grounded and nuanced readers of friendship in literature and in their own lives. In preparation for class discussion, teachers will be asked to view two films and read some short readings (stories, essays, poems, excerpts) which will be sent well in advance.

Karen Harris, author, teacher, NEH Institute instructor.
Location: Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: January 30 & February 5, 2026; 9:30am-3pm.

KAREN HARRIS taught high school English for 23 years, most recently at School-within-a-School at Brookline High School (MA) where she piloted and taught the class Friendship in Literature. She also directed the NEH institute for teachers, Friendship in Literature, Film, and Adolescence. She is an essayist and musician, and writes a Substack about poetry, teaching, and other phenomena. She lives in Watertown with her family and dogs.

Is Boston the nation’s most racist city? With a reputation as the “Cradle of Liberty,” the city often prides itself for its progressive politics, but many residents of color argue its legacy is actually that of segregation and racial inequality. Why has Boston’s racial history been obscured and what was its role in the civil rights movement?  What did the civil rights movement look like outside the U.S. South and how does the city of Boston provide a useful case study for examining the movement in the urban north? In this two-day seminar, teachers will be introduced to Boston’s postwar racial history, including segregation, migration, and urban crisis in Boston’s “Black Boomerang” neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and the South End. We will examine how African American and Latinx residents organized the local civil rights movement, a series of interconnected grassroots mobilizations around issues like poverty, welfare, housing, and education from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Tatiana Cruz, Simmons University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: October 27 & November 3, 2025; 9:30am – 3pm.

TATIANA CRUZ is a Boston native and Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Simmons University. She is the author of Deep North Uprising: African American and Latinx Politics and Protest in Boston (forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press) and has published widely in the fields of African American and Latinx history, Race/Ethnic Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. She holds a B.A. from Williams College, and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

This class will examine the origins and development of Christianity (or, more accurately, Christianities) as they develop in the ancient Mediterranean, North and East Africa, West Asia, and southern Europe. The class begins by considering what historians can know about small groups of Jesus followers in Roman Palestine, then looks at how the movement expands via trade routes and immigrant communities across the Roman Empire. While reading ancient primary sources (in translation), we will discuss a range of issues including religious practices, legal prosecution and martyrdom, doctrinal conflicts, the rise of asceticism, and the role of Constantine in generating religious orthodoxy. The course concludes by looking at long-lasting impact of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.

Jennifer Eyl, Tufts University
Location: Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square.
Dates: December 2 & December 9, 2025; 9:30am-3pm.

JENNIFER EYL received her PhD in Early Christianity from Brown University in 2012. Her research focuses on the origins of Christianity in the Roman Empire. She has published articles in the Journal of Ancient Judaism, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion and the Journal for the Study of the New Testament, as well as chapters in numerous books. She is the author of Signs, Wonders, and Gifts: Divination in the Letters of Paul (Oxford University Press, 2019) and the co-editor of Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation (Bloomsbury, 2018). Dr. Eyl is a founding editor for Religions in the Ancient Mediterranean Book Series (Eisenbrauns) and serves on the Editorial Board for the Library of New Testament Studies Series (T&T Clark). She teaches classes about the origins and spread of Christianity across the ancient Mediterranean, North Africa, Near East, and Central Asia; gender and sexuality in early Christianity; ancient Greek religion; and ancient creationism and apocalypticism.

Since the launch of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2009, the show has grown to include more than 20 franchise shows worldwide, has amassed the host a net worth to $60 Million, and has launched the careers of over 600 artists. There is a veritable global drag boom and the artform is seeing unprecedented popularity. At the same time, there has been an uptick in anti-drag legislation, as well as in institutional and everyday transphobia. What is it about drag that attracts such ire? How is drag equipped to respond to sociopolitical issues? Does drag perpetuate forms of social oppression or undo them? Using RuPaul’s Drag Race as a foundational object to think with, this class will explore the possibilities and problems that surround drag today, while also considering other histories of racial and gender equity that shape how we do and experience this artform.

Kareem Khubchandani, Tufts University
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: February 24 & March 3, 2026; 9:30am-3pm.

Kareem Khubchandani is the author of the award-winning books Decolonize Drag and Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife. He is also co-editor of the Lambda Literary-nominated Queer Nightlife, guest editor of Text and Performance Quarterly’s “Critical Aunty Studies,” and associate editor for GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Kareem is Associate Professor of theater, dance, and performance studies at Tufts University. His next book, Lessons in Drag: A Queer Manual for Academics, Artists, and Aunties is forthcoming in Fall 2025.

Since 2005, with the appointment of John Roberts as the 17 th Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, the Roberts’s Court has issued a series of decisions that have fundamentally impacted America – and you – in myriad ways. With the shift in the court’s composition – due to deaths and retirements and the appointments of new justices (mainly on the right) – the Robert’s Court has coalesced around a right-leaning ideology that is demonstrated in its landmark decisions. Included among these are:

• Trump v. United States, 2024 (separation of powers)
• Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 2024 (federal agencies)
• Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard & Students for Fair Admissions v.
• University of North Carolina, 2023 (affirmative action, equal protection, college
• admissions):
• 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 2023 (religion, free speech, LGTBQ+ rights)
• Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 2022 (due process, abortion &
• reproductive rights)
• Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 2022 (separation of church and state)
• Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020 (labor, employment, LGTBQ+ rights)
• Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 2018 (religious
• freedom, LGTBQ+ rights)
• Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015 (due process, equal protection, LGTBQ+ rights)
• Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 2014 (religion and health care)
• Shelby County v. Holder, 2013 (voting, civil rights, elections)
• National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 2012 (Congressional
• powers, health care)
• Citizens United v. FEC, 2010 (voting, elections, freedom of speech, campaign
• finance limits)
• District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008 (gun owners’ rights, gun control)

In this two-day seminar, we will discuss some of these watershed cases and what they mean for you and the nation.

Maura A. Henry, Holyoke Community College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: February 4 & March 3, 2026; 9:30am-3pm.

MAURA HENRY is an historian who has taught in and co-led Harvard’s History and Women’s Studies programs. Having earned her bachelor’s degree at Smith in History and Philosophy and her master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard, Maura explores gender, power, and culture in her scholarship and interdisciplinary courses. Her writings include A Duchess’s Grand Tour, The Making of Aristocratic English Culture, The Soul of the People and the WPA’s Writer’s Project, and Rescue (an award-winning screenplay). She has previously led a TAS study tour to Dublin. Currently, she is working on a manuscript on family, dysfunction, and meaning.

The Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest independent libraries in the U.S., voraciously acquired books, art and artifacts and quickly rose to become Boston’s center of intellectual life in the 19th century. This 2-day course will explore Boston history through the lens of the Athenaeum’s collections, especially its rare materials and works of art and how these reflect (or don’t reflect) the stories of different populations, political struggles and debates in the city in the 19th century. Participants will learn from curators and scholars about the role of photography, printing and publishing in this time period, engage with collections about Beacon Hill’s Black activist community and spend time throughout the Athenaeum’s beautiful building. Participants will each receive a membership day pass to use beyond the workshop.

Michelle LeBlanc, The Boston Athenaeum
Location: The Boston Athenaeum, Boston, MA
Dates: March 10 & 31, 2026;  9:30am-3pm.

MICHELLE LEBLANC is the Director of Education at the Boston Athenaeum. She previously served as Director of Education for a decade at the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library. She has over 20 years of experience in museums, libraries and classrooms, teaching history and designing collaborative programming for varied audiences. She previously ran two federal Teaching American History grant programs for K-12 educators through The Education Cooperative, a collaborative of 16 school districts in the Boston area. Before that, she worked across a variety of historical sites, from Old South Meeting House and the Paul Revere House to Historic New England. She received her M.A. in History/ Public History from Northeastern University and is a licensed teacher for grades 5-8 in Massachusetts.

This course will look at the history of American immigration and ethnicity since 1924. We will examine the changing demographics of immigrants to America over that period and look at how immigration law has evolved. Among the topics we will cover are: immigration quotas, Cold War refugee policy, the impact of the 1965 Immigration Act, and recent trends in immigration legislation and enforcement. We will pay specific attention to immigration to Massachusetts since 1965. Lastly, the class will focus on the evolution of ethnic identities during this period and read excerpts of contemporary fiction and memoirs that help define the experience of immigrants and their children.

Vincent Cannato, UMass Boston
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 26 & April 2, 2026; 9:30am-3pm.

VINCENT J. CANNATO is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He received his BA with honors in Political Science from Williams College and his PhD in History from Columbia University. At UMASS Boston, Prof. Cannato teaches courses on New York City history, Boston history, immigration history, and twentieth-century American history. He is the author of American Passage: The History of Ellis Island (HarperCollins, 2009); The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his Struggle to Save New York (Basic Books, 2001); and co-editor of Living in the Eighties (Oxford University Press, 2009). He is currently working on a political biography of Francis Cardinal Spellman, former archbishop of New York. Professor Cannato has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Politico, Humanities Magazine, and The New Republic.

We are now more than twenty years beyond the publication of Michael Lewis’ classic book Moneyball, which popularized the previously niche subject of sports analytics.  Since that time the field has grown and evolved, and now the introduction of legalized wagering on sports has made a generation much more interested in data analytics.  In this course, we first discuss the relatively simple mathematical underpinnings used by Sports Books to ensure they are profitable.  Then we will consider the tricky problems of ranking and voting that are closely related.  We will even unwrap the mystery of how the MIAA power rankings work for team sports!  These problems will incorporate many different mathematical tools, some easy enough to use in K-6 classrooms, some more sophisticated but easy to explain and replicate in a high school course.  We also consider how to counteract the negative image of analytics so widely held among media members and sports fans.

Richard Cleary, Babson College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: November 12 & 19, 2025; 9:30am-3pm.

RICK CLEARY teaches at Babson College where he is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics and Weissman family Professor of Business Analytics. He has previously taught at Bentley University, Harvard University, Cornell University and St. Michael’s College. He works as an applied statistician in various fields, with recent publications related to sports, fraud detection in accounting, measuring creativity in business students, and biomechanics. Rick is the Vice-President of the Mathematical Association of America, and serves as first editor of a new journal, Scatterplot, that debuted in 2024 with a goal of helping mathematics teachers prepare students for careers in data science. He has athletic experience as a runner (including 32 Boston marathons), a high school and college cross country coach, a race director and a youth sports coach in soccer, basketball and baseball.

We all understand that there is the possibility of anomalous outcomes in elections in the United States. For instance, the candidate who wins the Electoral College might differ from the candidate who wins the popular vote in a Presidential election.  A fundamental problem is that different election methods can yield different winners even if no voter has changed their preference. However, these issues aren’t limited to political elections—they can arise whenever a group makes a collective decision, whether it’s a committee selecting a scholarship winner or a group of friends deciding which movie to watch.

We will use a bit of geometry and high school algebra to explore the rich structure underlying decision-making procedures. By understanding this structure, we can explain why different decision methods produce different outcomes. We will see how to apply these ideas to your own group decisions and see what insight these ideas give to some of the proposed reforms for public elections, such as Ranked Choice Voting. The concepts will be accessible to anyone who has taken high school math and can be adapted for middle or high school classrooms.

Tommy Ratliff, Wheaton College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: February 3 & 10, 2026; 9:30am-3pm.

TOMMY RATLIFF is a Professor of Mathematics at Wheaton College, where he has taught for nearly 30 years. His teaching spans the entire curriculum, from introductory courses for first-year students to advanced topics like Cryptography. His research primarily focuses on Voting Theory, with recent work addressing mathematical questions related to redistricting and gerrymandering. He has been an active member of the Mathematical Association of America, particularly in the Northeastern Section, and he has also held several faculty leadership roles at Wheaton. However, all of his administrative experiences have reaffirmed his love of the classroom and helping undergraduates think deeply about interesting mathematics.

Sadly, students often learn math as a set of rules to apply to unmotivated exercises. We’ll discuss a variety of problems with minimal pre-requisites that highlight how and why to do algebra, drawing our examples from cryptography and game theory, as well as pure math. We’ll show how to use this material for classes from kindergarten to calculus. Topics may include: chocolate bar game (highlighting evens and odds), rectangle game (a special sequence of numbers), how to create a good statistic (figuring out what to study), the pirate game (going from easy states to more complicated), and RSA encryption (abstract algebra, number theory and modern e-commerce!).

Pre-requisites: a willingness to actively explore math.

Steven J. Miller, Williams College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: March 2 & 9, 2026; 9:30am-3pm.

STEVEN J. MILLER is a Professor of Mathematics at Williams College. He has written over 200 papers with over 600 students in accounting, computer science, economics, geology, marketing, number theory, probability / statistics, and sabermetrics, and 6 books on Benford’s law, cryptography, number theory, operations research and probability. He is active in high school mathematics, lecturing and mentoring at programs for talented students, participating in education conferences and writing problems for competitions, and serving as an elected member of the Lanesborough -Williamstown Regional School District. His math riddles webpage is often a top hit in Google searches, and he and his students have consulted on projects involving major league baseball, health care companies, financial firms, and school districts. He’s the President of the Fibonacci Association, and is active in outreach efforts to students and teachers.

This intensive two-day workshop will empower high school teachers to harness the transformative potential of artificial intelligence in science education. You’ll discover how modern AI techniques like large language models reshape scientific discovery and learn to integrate these tools into your classroom. The program provides hands-on experience with AI-driven data analysis, visualization tools, and predictive modeling that can make sophisticated research methodologies accessible to high school students working with real datasets and authentic scientific questions.

You’ll gain practical strategies for using AI to enhance lesson planning, generate age-appropriate explanations of complex phenomena, and guide students in hypothesis generation and scientific inquiry. Through interactive activities, you’ll work directly with AI tools and collaborate with fellow science educators to develop concrete implementation strategies. This workshop emphasizes responsible AI use while developing students’ critical thinking skills about the technology itself, preparing you to help your students navigate an increasingly AI-driven scientific landscape.

Hanspeter Pfister, Harvard University
Location: School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University
Dates: January 13 & 20, 2026; 9am- 3pm.

HANSPETER PFISTER is the An Wang Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and an affiliate faculty member of the Harvard Center for Brain Science. He served as director of the Institute for Applied Computational Science 2013-17 and as Academic Dean for Computational Science and Engineering 2021-24. His research in visual computing lies at the intersection of visualization, computer graphics, and computer vision. It spans various topics, including biomedical visualization, image and video analysis, machine learning, and data science. Pfister has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stony Brook University, New York, and an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Before joining Harvard, he worked for over a decade at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories as Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist. He was the chief architect of VolumePro, Mitsubishi Electric’s award-winning real-time volume rendering graphics card, for which he received the Mitsubishi Electric President’s Award in 2000. Pfister was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2019 and an IEEE Fellow in 2023. He received the 2010 IEEE Visualization Technical Achievement Award, the 2009 IEEE Meritorious Service Award, and the 2009 Petra T. Shattuck Excellence in Teaching Award. Pfister is a member of the ACM SIGGRAPH Academy, the IEEE Visualization Academy, and a director of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee and the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee.

This two-part workshop is intended for teachers who want to take their students outside for meaningful learning but either don’t know how to start or need new inspiration. Using the Arnold Arboretum’s landscape for learning, we will spend the first day outdoors using the framework “Observe, Talk, and Record” to experience outdoor tasks that meet a range of ages, developmental needs and life science-based curriculum goals. We will explore some common questions that come up during the season: What are some signs of spring? How do trees “know” when to push out leaves? Why are some trees shaped the way they are? How can we take the unpredictable in nature and turn it into a learning opportunity? Part Two will continue with outdoor experiences while also covering the challenges of managing children and materials in a school yard, nearby park or even at the Arboretum. This course may be particularly useful for teachers of K-5, but all teachers welcome. Immerse yourself in the natural world to awaken your sense of wonder and curiosity, and gain more skills for your journey of teaching and learning outdoors.

Ana Maria Caballero, Outdoor Educator
Location: Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Boston, MA 02130
Dates: April 1 & 15, 2026 (rain or shine!); 9:30am – 2:30pm , with a 30-min. lunch.

Ana Maria Caballero is the Outdoor Educator at the Arnold Arboretum. She has over 20 years of teaching experience with elementary aged students in public schools, and 10 years leading nature-based school programs at the Arboretum. Her passion is connecting children with the outdoors to make life-science learning engaging and alive! She has a BA in Early Childhood and Moderate Special Needs Education from Boston College.

In 2025, the world commemorates the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. In this two-day seminar, we will explore the life and times of Austen, a relatively obscure spinster who lived a quiet life in rural England and died at the age of 41. Whilst prevailing gender and social rank norms disadvantaged her, Austen navigated these constraints and penned some of the best and most popular novels in the English language. With a focus on both gender and social rank ideologies and conventions in the period, we will analyze and discuss a curated collection of primary sources related to Austen’s life and work. Additionally, we will consider some recent film adaptations that re-imagine the life of Austen and her published works for modern audiences, including Becoming Jane (2007) and Miss Austen (2025), among others.

Maura A. Henry, Holyoke Community College
Location: The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Harvard Square
Dates: November 17 & December 1, 2025;  9:30am-3pm.

MAURA HENRY is an historian who has taught in and co-led Harvard’s History and Women’s Studies programs. Having earned her bachelor’s degree at Smith in History and Philosophy and her master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard, Maura explores gender, power, and culture in her scholarship and interdisciplinary courses. Her writings include A Duchess’s Grand Tour, The Making of Aristocratic English Culture, The Soul of the People and the WPA’s Writer’s Project, and Rescue (an award-winning screenplay). She has previously led a TAS study tour to Dublin. Currently, she is working on a manuscript on family, dysfunction, and meaning.