2019 Building Technology Educators’ Society Conference – “Integration and Innovation”

The Building Technology Educators’ Society is pleased to announce the Call for Submissions for our 2019 conference, “Integration and Innovation,” which will be held June 20-22, 2019 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Theme Overview:

“The cross pollination of disciplines is fundamental to truly revolutionary advances in our culture.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

Innovation can begin with conjecture, with a searching for more effective solutions, or with an application to currently unknown or unarticulated needs. Innovation scholarship examines the personal intellectual habits that support new ideas, such as openness and exploratory behavior, as well as the circumstances behind the places in which creativity flourishes, such as support for cross-disciplinary fertilization and access to resources. The 2019 BTES Conference will explore the role of technology education and curriculum in cultivating these intellectual habits in our students (and ourselves) and in creating the organizational spaces in which the future of practice will be shaped. Sessions will seek exemplary proposals of research and pedagogical applications that explore innovative practices and integrative thinking in the academy and profession.

These intertwined themes of innovation and integration are deeply embodied in the proposed host site, the award-winning John W. Olver Design Building at the University of Massachusetts. Named one of the Best Buildings of 2017 by the Wall Street Journal, the 87,000 square foot building counted a number of superlatives at its opening, among them, the most technologically advanced cross-laminated timber building in the country. However, while we are delighted by these accolades and the building’s warm appeal, it is the organizational potential that the site embodies that makes it a fitting host for the 2019 BTES Conference.

Further information regarding Registration and the Call for Submissions can be found on the conference website: www.BTES2019.com. Please contact the conference organizers at BTES2019@UMass.edu with questions.