We are very excited to welcome Dr. Jerry Hoepner to our campus as our 2024 CONNECT Keynote Speaker!

Keynote Address: From Listeners to Decision Makers: Empowering Students as Partners

We can empower students as partners by fostering active learning and flexible, less-scripted learning in authentic contexts, drawing upon principles of apprenticeship and co-design. This requires relinquishing some control, allowing students to co-direct and partner in their learning. This presentation will address programming and course designs that attempt to accomplish this.

Keynote Speaker Biography

Dr. Jerry Hoepner is a Professor at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. He began teaching part-time for UWEC CSD in 2003 and full-time in 2007. He teaches courses in anatomy and physiology, undergraduate research, acquired cognitive disorders, dysphagia, and counseling. His research addresses healthcare perceptions, video self-modeling interventions for persons with acquired language or cognitive disorders, counseling methods and training, undergraduate research, non-course based learning, and instructional pedagogies. He is a founding editor of Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences and Disorders (TLCSD). He is an Aphasia Access affiliate and interviewer for the Aphasia Access Conversations Podcast series. He is a co-founder of the UWEC CSD SoTL Lab (scholarship of teaching and learning research). He continues to have a regular role in clinical contexts and supervision. He is a co-founder of the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Camp, co-founder of the Mayo Brain Injury Group, founder of the Blugold Brain Injury Group, and founder of the Thursday Night Poets for people with brain injuries and aphasia. In addition, he facilitates a statewide social communication intervention for individuals with brain injuries and their partners called TBIconneCT (North American version ) and FUNconneCT, an individualized TBIconneCT follow-up intervention for individuals affected by brain injury. Dr. Hoepner is also a co-founder of the ASHA SIG20 for Counseling in CSD. Dr. Hoepner is passionate about teaching and mentoring. He has mentored countless undergraduate, student-faculty collaborative research projects as well as numerous graduate theses and doctoral dissertation committees. Outside of work, Jerry is an avid outdoors person and enjoys traveling/spending time with his family. He loves a variety of music ranging from Bluegrass to Americana, to folk, and classic rock n' roll. Ask him about muskie fishing in the summer and ice fishing in the winter. He is always busy with woodworking and some sort of home remodeling.