Meet Cassandra Volpe Horii, POD Network’s current president, as she shares updates about how the POD Network is planning for the future of the organization and the field. To learn more, including how you can get involved and help shape this future, click HERE.

The POD Network is currently undergoing a strategic planning process, an activity we undertake at least every seven years to ensure that our actions reflect our mission and our aspirations for the organization at this time, as well as the needs of our current membership. As an organization committed to evidence-based practices, inclusivity, and distributed leadership, our strategic planning process enacts these values to help the POD Network fulfill our mission and vision through coordinated action toward agreed-upon goals. At this time, the Strategic Planning ad hoc committee would like to update the membership on the process and progress to-date and share some next steps. To learn more, click HERE.

Leadership and managing change are two of the most pressing concerns POD Network Members face in their institutions and in the educational development profession. From November 14-18, 2018, we will gather in Portland, OR to discuss these and other issues during our annual conference, “Leading in Times of Change.”

We received a record number of 472 proposals in response to the call, with 363 POD Network members who volunteered to be peer reviewers. The conference team looks forward to communicating acceptances in Mid-June. To learn more about the conference and keynote speaker, click HERE.

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) SIG was created in fall 2017 to support educational developers who support SoTL at their institutions. During our first few months, we gained 71 members, established a Google Group and Drive for members to share resources and ideas, and began planning for next year's conference. To get involved in the SoTL conversation at POD, send an email to [email protected] or visit https://podnetwork.org/about-us/pod-governance/special-interest-groups-sigs/ for more information.

Each year the POD Network recognizes the contributions of its members to our organization, and our field. through a number of awards. To learn more about these award opportunities, including their descriptions, requirement and upcoming submission timelines, click HERE.

In other exciting news, we are pleased to share the outstanding work of our POD members and to highlight their accomplishments! Therefore, this month we would like to feature the following:

POD Live provides a series of thought-provoking presentations and conversations by leading educational developers. This month features Allison Boyd, Ph.D. from Texas Tech University.  In this video she presents, "Mattering to Ourselves: Confronting Burnout and Compassion Fatigue for Educational Developers."

A group of higher education assessment practitioners recently crafted “Why Are We Assessing?” by collaborating through the ASSESS listserv, sponsored by the Association for the Assessment of Learning in Higher Education. The statement, signed by over 130 individuals, emphasizes the importance of assessment in helping faculty understand and thereby improve student learning. It also states the need to invest in educational development to help faculty employ research-informed educational strategies and to use assessment to decide how best to do so. It also stresses that institution-wide collaboration is vital to helping students receive the best possible education and using assessment evidence to do so.