I am still riding high from all of the great energy from both the online and in person conference experiences. We had a record-breaking number of participants at the two conference venues—1266 total, with 813 in Seattle and 435 online.

It was great to see many of you in Zoom rooms, ballrooms, session rooms, and of course, at the Karaoke venue. We look forward to reviewing your feedback, so please complete the conference survey we sent to both conference attendees on December 5.

I wanted to share a few thoughts and updates before the end of the year activities and holiday celebrations begin in earnest.

Congratulations to Hoag Holmgren on a new job!

Hoag Holmgren, the long-standing Executive Director of the POD Network, is taking on a new role as the Chief Innovation Officer for the QASPIR Foundation beginning on March 1, 2023. We are extremely proud of Hoag and wish him well in his new endeavor. We are also incredibly thankful for the many contributions that Hoag has made during his 17 years as Executive Director to POD members, employees, volunteers, committees, especially the conference committee, and the rest of the POD Network. Feel free to reach out to Hoag directly to express your personal congratulations for this exciting new phase in his career. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

We are working with the Think Again Training and Consulting group to develop an inclusive search process to select the next Executive Director of the POD Network. More details regarding the search are forthcoming.

Re: Calibrating Your Educational Development Compasses

I am thankful to all of you for your contributions to my presidential address at both conference venues. Your ideas about the ways that the POD Network, the scholarship of teaching and educational development, and specific people help you calibrate your work as educational developers are priceless. More importantly, I am grateful that many of you shared the ways you are pushing yourselves and the walls you are pushing against as you continue your educational development journey. I am humbled and inspired by the wealth of ideas and thoughts expressed through the Mentimeter channel and attempted to summarize this information for this message. However, I realized that your contributions were not meant to be summarized or analyzed, so instead, I return the contributions to all of you to peruse and find what speaks to you, whether it be a POD resource you didn’t know about, a scholar you want to learn more about, or a name of someone to connect with. I provide a link to view the online version of my address for those of you who were unable to attend. You can scroll through the responses and move through all of the slides using the slide advance tool provided.

Recording of Online Presidential Address
https://podnetwork.org/pod22-presidential-address/

Online Mentimeter Contributions
https://www.mentimeter.com/app/presentation/alswtxbjx11ojhvtp2fo2x28gbj2yf2x 

Seattle Mentimeter Contributions
https://www.mentimeter.com/app/presentation/al8ppkahrcfrh1jrzy5via6daxintgxr

A Possibility Model for an Inclusive and Accessible Organization

Finally, I would like to provide additional context and updates on our efforts to become a more inclusive and accessible organization that more fully realizes our values to embrace diversity and equity in all areas of our work. During the past year, we have been working with the Think Again Training and Consulting (TATC) Group to conduct an audit of our established policies and practices, including internal and external-facing activities and structures, through a DEI lens to identify past and ongoing inequities and harmful practices. TATC engaged with POD members with the assistance of the Change Advisory Team (CAT). The CAT was assembled to reflect POD members with a range of identities, experience with POD, and who work at different types of academic and related institutions. 

Together TATC and CAT reviewed POD Network documents, communications, governance materials, and focus group transcripts. Preliminary results revealed four areas of improvement and growth that we must attend to in the coming years — (1) building organizational capacity, (2) holding ourselves accountable to our values, (3) lowering barriers to leadership, and (4) reducing systemic bias and increasing accessibility. Specific details about these areas of growth and some of the ways we have started to address them were presented by the presidential team (Fran Glazer, Past President; Stacy Grooters, President-Elect; and myself) to both the online and in person conference attendees on November 18. I hope you take a few minutes to read through the slides and share your thoughts with us using this form (http://bit.ly/pod22pres-comment).

I am honored to be a part of this organization as we enter into a critical and exciting phase of development for our organization and field. Please reach out with any questions or concerns you want to share with me.

Wishing you all a joyful and restful holiday season and new year.

Warmly,

Carol

Carol A. Hurney, Ph.D.
President, The POD Network
Associate Provost, Faculty Development & Diversity
Founding Director, Center for Teaching & Learning
Colby College