Dr. C. Edward Watson is the Vice President for Digital Innovation. He provides leadership for the association’s national and state-level advocacy to advance quality in undergraduate student learning. This includes programming and a scholarly agenda that focuses on general education, faculty development, teaching and learning practice, and evidence-based instruction enhanced by technology. For the latter, key foci include artificial intelligence (A.I.), digital equity, open learning, and ePortfolios. Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) is his latest book. His book series on General Education Reform (Routledge) will arrive in early 2025.
Dr. Watson also directs AAC&U’s Institute on AI, Pedagogy, and the Curriculum, the Institute on Digital Equity, the Institute on Open Educational Resources, and the Forum on Digital Innovation and co-directs the Institute on General Education, Pedagogy, and Assessment and the Conference on General Education, Pedagogy, and Assessment. Additional areas of leadership include an array of curricular and pedagogical improvement efforts, including the development of assignment design tools which align with AAC&U’s VALUE rubrics.
Prior to joining AAC&U, Dr. Watson was the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia (UGA) where he led university efforts associated with faculty development, TA development, student learning outcomes assessment, learning technologies, media production services, classroom support and learning spaces, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He also taught a range of courses on college teaching, student learning, and course design. He continues to serve as a Fellow in the Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education at UGA.
Dr. Watson is the founding Executive Editor of the International Journal of ePortfolio and recently stepped down after more than a decade as the Executive Editor of the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. In addition to the aforementioned books on A.I. and general education, he is also the author ofMaking the Case for Open Educational Resources (AAC&U),Leveraging Open Educational Resources to Advance Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: A Guide for Campus Change Agents(AAC&U), Teaching Naked Techniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes (Jossey-Bass) and Playing to Learn with Reacting to the Past: Research on High Impact, Active Learning Practices (Palgrave MacMillan).
José Antonio Bowen has been leading innovation and change for over 40 years at Stanford, Georgetown, and the University of Southampton (UK), then as a dean at Miami University and SMU and as President of Goucher College (voted a Top 10 Most Innovative College under his leadership). He now runs Bowen Innovation Group L.L.C., and does innovation, pedagogy and D&I consulting and training in both higher education and for Fortune 500 companies including AT&T, Chevron, Pfizer, Toyota, and Walmart.
As a scholar, Bowen holds four degrees from Stanford University (in Chemistry, Music, and Humanities), has written over 100 scholarly articles, was editor of the Cambridge Companion to Conducting (2003), and an editor of the 6-CD set, Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology (2011). He received a National Endowment for theHumanities Fellowship and has a TED talk on Beethoven as Bill Gates. In 2010, Stanford honored him as a Distinguished Alumni Scholar.
Bowen is a musician and has appeared on five continents as a jazz pianist and conductor with Stan Getz,Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Brubeck, Liberace, and many others. His compositions include a symphony (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 1985), and music for Jerry Garcia.
Bowen has long been a pioneer in education, classroom design and technology, featured in The New YorkTimes, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Newsweek, PBS News Hour,and on NPR (an extended media list is here). He was given a Stanford Centennial Award for UndergraduateTeaching in 1990 and he has presented keynotes and workshops at more than 400 campuses and conferences in 46 states and 20 countries around the world.
His books on teaching include Teaching Naked (2012) winner of the Ness Award for Best Book on HigherEducation from the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the sequel, Teaching NakedTechniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes with C. Edward Watson (2017) and Teaching Change: How to Develop Independent Thinkers using Relationships, Resilience and Reflection(2021, Johns Hopkins University Press). His latest book with C. Edward Watson is Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning (2024, Johns Hopkins University Press).
For more, see his website teachingnaked.com or his education TED talks.
In 2018 he received the Ernest L. Boyer Award (for significant contributions to American higher education) from the New American Colleges and Universities. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) in England, is currently a Senior Fellow at the Association of American of Colleges and Universities.
