By Joice Tang, HCDE PhD student
In September 2025, I had the opportunity to attend 4S here in Seattle. It was my second time attending this conference, and I was really able to feel how much this conference felt like a “home conference.” The work that is presented at 4S is incredibly diverse, and as such, I’m not sure if I feel that the whole of the conference reflects my work and interests, but I really felt like there was a community of people for me to build relationships and share ideas with. Given that I am an interdisciplinary scholar, it might just be that no conferences (that currently exist) completely reflect my work and interests, so perhaps the diversity of 4S actually makes it perfect for me.
At 4S, I presented in a panel titled “Power, Responsibility and Expertise at the Expanding Table(s) of AI Design and Governance #1” with a presentation entitled “Navigating the Response to Corporatization & AI in Higher Education as Unionized Workers.” The work that I was presenting was really key to my understanding of the current direction of my research, but it wasn’t quite impactful (or theoretical) enough to write a full paper about it. 4S was the perfect venue to share this work – the audience clearly really enjoyed and appreciated my presentation, and several faculty members came up to me afterwards to talk more with me about it. One of them actually said he might reach out and have me talk to his class sometime, which is really cool! This experience (and these faculty members) encouraged me to turn my presentation into a more casual format that will still enable people to learn from my work, such as a blog post or a Medium article, since it does seem like it’s more helpful and/or meaningful to people than I thought it would be. In many ways, the experience of presenting my work really helped reaffirm my commitment to my ideas and research focus. It helped me feel reinvigorated and motivated about moving forward with my work.
4S was a really wonderful experience that enabled me to connect and reconnect with my broader research community. I felt like I really built up strong relationships with my academic peers in a way that will support and inspire impactful, thoughtful research in the various spaces that we will find ourselves in. I left the conference with a sense that I, along with this community, will be able to make more positive change in the world than when I went in.
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The Mary B. Coney Endowed Fund, named in honor of Emeritus Professor Mary Coney, supports HCDE students by funding costs associated with travel to conferences and international workshops. Your support of this fund enriches the HCDE student experience and enhances HCDE's influence in the field.