The landscape of higher education is undergoing a rapid evolution shaped by technological advancements, societal shifts, and global challenges. Educational development professionals play a critical role in enabling institutions to navigate accelerated change by intentionally designing learning environments and teaching practices that support the educational mission.
Educational development professionals are uniquely positioned to support institutional resilience by designing relationship-rich organizational learning environments grounded in teaching and learning practice (Hayward et al., 2024; Benander, & Refaei, 2025). Educational development enterprises, as coordinated collections of programs, practices, and relationships, can mitigate the challenges of burnout and disengagement by enabling shared sense-making, relational support, and sustained professional engagement. By approaching educational development as coordinated, intentional design work by fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, leveraging innovative technologies, and advancing evidence-based practices we can collectively address the challenges facing higher education and support teaching and learning communities to thrive amidst uncertainty and change (Zou et al, 2026; Tarchinski et al, 2025; Wright, Addy, Eynon, Rivard, 2025).
We invite proposals that engage the conference theme by examining how educational development professionals design, steward, and coordinate teaching and learning practices within complex institutional contexts. Submissions should foster meaningful dialogue, practical application, and collaborative exploration, and offer innovative, evidence-based, and actionable insights that advance educational development practice, support equitable learning environments, and build resilience for individuals and institutions in higher education.
This year’s conference theme emerged through a process of collective reflection with the POD community. Earlier this year, members were invited to share words that capture the questions, challenges, and possibilities shaping their work in educational development and higher education today. What emerged from these reflections was a community thinking deeply about its purpose, grounded in present realities, attentive to its history, and clear-eyed about the responsibility of this moment. The responses revealed a profession that recognizes educational development stands at a pivotal moment for higher education itself, one that calls for collective insight, courage, and leadership.
Across the responses, opportunities and tensions for exploration surfaced. Educational development professionals are tasked with helping institutions navigate rapid technological transformation while preserving learning that matters. Members emphasized the importance of prioritizing relational and human-centered aspects of their work with a focus on care, connection, dialogue, and meaning in learning environments that often feel strained. These reflections highlight a profession operating at the crossroads of innovation, care, and institutional change—a profession uniquely positioned to help higher education navigate complexity while upholding values and fostering systems, cultures, and practices that support transformative learning.
The conference theme emerged from these collective reflections. Rather than prescribing a single direction, it opens space for the questions the community itself is asking. It invites all of us to pause, take stock of this moment, and engage in it together. By bringing together scholarship, lived experience, and collaborative inquiry, we can meet this moment as a community by clarifying the role educational development must play in the future of higher education and by strengthening the profession as a vital infrastructure for teaching, learning, and institutional transformation.
