Strozier Faculty Lecture Series with Katia Karadjova

The 2022-2023 Robert I. Strozier Faculty Lecture Series begins this semester on Friday, Feb. 10, with Katia Karadjova. She will be presenting the lecture, "Mindfulness and Playful Pedagogy in the Higher Education Classroom" at noon in the Ogeechee Theater on the Armstrong campus in Savannah. Abstract and speaker bio below.
 

ABSTRACT: The presentation will introduce the audience to mindfulness, contemplative pedagogy and the Brain Booth Initiative at GS Libraries as a representation of an innovative approach. While mindfulness has been around for thousands of years, within specific cultures, it has only recently been making its way into the higher education classroom of the western world. Mindfulness is a mental state of focused attention in the present moment without judgmental perspectives. Contemplative pedagogy offers educational methods that support the development of student attention, emotional balance, empathetic connection, compassion, and altruistic behavior, while also providing new pedagogical techniques that support creativity and the learning of course content.

BIO: Katia G. Karadjova-Kozhuharova, Ph.D., is the associate dean of libraries for research & assessment at Georgia Southern University. Her doctoral work was on culturally grounded approaches to information literacy understanding. Katia is an active scholar and her areas of scholarly research include information literacy, international librarianship through the lens of human rights and travel literature, and mindfulness and contemplative pedagogy. She is also a poet and a fiction writer. Katia has published 15 books, several book chapters and a number of articles. In her free time, Katia enjoys photography, racquet sports and traveling.