2025
June 16-18, 2025
Long Beach, CA

Beyond Theory: A Practical Approach to Trauma-Informed Teaching & Learning

(unscheduled)

Presented by: Mays Imad, Ph.D., Neuroscientist, Educator, and Mental Health Advocate

Speaker Bio:

Mays Imad received her undergraduate training from the University of Michigan–Dearborn where she studied philosophy. She received her doctoral degree in Cellular & Clinical Neurobiology from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan. She then completed a National Institute of Health-Funded postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona in the Department of Neuroscience. She joined the department of life & physical sciences at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona as an adjunct faculty member in 2009 and later as a full-time faculty member in 2013. During her tenure at Pima, she taught Physiology, Pathophysiology, Genetics, Biotechnology, and Biomedical ethics. She also founded Pima’s Teaching and Learning Center (TLC).
Imad is currently teaching in the biology department at Connecticut College.
Mays is a Gardner Institute Fellow and an AAC&U Senior Fellow within the Office of Undergraduate STEM Education. Dr. Imad’s research focuses on stress, self-awareness, advocacy, and classroom community, and how these impact student learning and success. Through her teaching and research she seeks to provide her students with transformative opportunities that are grounded in the aesthetics of learning, truth-seeking, justice, and self-realization.
Outside of the classroom, Dr. Imad works with faculty members across disciplines at her own institution and across the country to promote inclusive, equitable, and contextual education–all rooted in the latest research on the neurobiology of learning. A nationally-recognized expert on trauma-informed teaching and learning, she passionately advocates for institutions to make mental health a top priority and to systematically support the education of the whole student.

Session Info:

In the midst of an ongoing pandemic, how will we welcome our students and colleagues to our institutions and classrooms this year and beyond? What can we, as educators, possibly do to help attend to their mental health needs and ameliorate their exhaustion and distress, while at the same time, intentionally engaging in self-care? In this keynote, we will consider the power of knowledge; how understanding the neuroscience of toxic stress empowers us to self-regulate and help our students cope, engage, connect, and learn. We will examine the principles and practical examples of equity-centered trauma-informed approaches and reflect on the connections between trauma-informed education, healing, and restorative justice. Join us and come away with concrete strategies you can use in your own courses and contexts to help your students’ learning and success.

Session Resources:

Beyond Theory MAYS IMAD KEYNOTE

View the Session Recording*

(*due to technical issues, this recording is missing first minutes)

Online Teaching Conference 2025

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