Featured Speakers
Enoch Hale, Ph.D.
Dr. Enoch Hale is a recognized authority on critical thinking theory and practice. He has presented over 150 faculty enrichment workshops and regularly consults with various colleges, universities and government organizations nationally and internationally to translate critical thinking initiatives into concrete assessment and classroom practices. His dissertation stands as one of the most comprehensive analyses of Richard Paul’s framework for critical thinking. His work at Virginia Commonwealth University regularly involves helping faculty embed critical thinking theory and practice within their course work and pedagogy to cultivate deep learning experiences for students in dynamic and inclusive ways. Currently, Dr. Hale researches and publishes on ways to surface insights from the discourse on critical thinking and apply them to faculty development. He teaches an undergraduate course entitled Inquiry & the Craft of Argument and a doctoral course entitled Teaching, Learning & Technology and the Future of Higher Education.
Brian Barnes, Ph.D.
Dr. Brian Barnes has been teaching critical thinking and logic courses at universities since 1997. His original application of the Paul-Elder critical thinking system was published as a Business Ethics textbook in 2013, titled, The Central Question: Critical Engagement with Business Ethics. Barnes has presented dozens of professional development workshops for university administrators and faculty, corporate and government leaders, and secondary school teachers. Barnes holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Hanover College and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Louisville, where his work focused on phenomenology and the teaching of logic. His Ph.D. from the University of Louisville focuses on the informal logic tradition in critical thinking and advocates fair-minded critical thinking as a method for developing teaching structures in any discipline. Barnes has earned grants for critical thinking work from the James Randi Education Foundation, the Ideas to Action initiative and Metro Louisville government. In addition to being a veteran of the US Army and a former NSA cryptologic linguist, Barnes has also managed a natural and organic grocery. He is regularly invited to lead workshops about critical thinking, sustainability activism, and Japanese martial arts.