Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

Special Interest Groups (SIGs) bring together interested members around enduring subjects of interest and importance in the field of Educational Development. SIG leaders are expected to send a report to the POD Network’s Core Committee twice yearly, prior to the spring and fall Core meetings. The Executive Director will provide instructions and timeline to all SIG chairs prior to these meetings.

POD members seeking approval for a new Special Interest Group must complete and submit a petition, found on this web page, accompanied by a signature form which requires a minimum of 25 POD member signatures, at least five of whom are willing to participate in a leadership role for the new SIG. After submitting the petition, the requestor should download this signature form and circulate it among other POD members to request signatures of support. Upon completion of the form, the requestor should forward it to the POD Office at [email protected].

Upon receipt of the petition and completed signature form, the POD Office staff will confirm that at least 25 of the signatories hold current memberships in the POD Network. After confirmation, the POD Office will forward the petition to the Executive Committee for review and subsequent submission to the Core Committee for consideration.

Accessibility and Disability (A&D) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Co-Chairs: Eunice Ofori, Mac Crite, and Matt McKenzie

Core Committee Representative: Cait Kirby

SIG Charge:

The Accessibility and Disability SIG aims to identify, address, and provide recommendations around accessibility and disability across learning spaces in higher education. Disability is often left out of conversations about equity, and in equity discussions, access and accessibility are often conflated. The goals of the Accessibility and Disability SIG are to highlight and rectify accessibility challenges that students, instructors, and educational developers encounter in the course of their work at all levels. 

This SIG will work to facilitate every student, instructor, and educational developer thriving with the support they need. Through discussions around practices, approaches, and working/learning conditions, the Accessibility and Disability SIG advocates for moving beyond  mere adherence to minimum, legally-mandated compliance standards (which vary across the world), but to exceed them. The SIG will focus on developing relationships, promoting a variety of evidence-supported and contextual accessible  practices, supporting individual and collective professional development, and generating scholarly work to advance the field and position accessibility as a central element of this work.

Adjunct/Part-Time Faculty SIG

Email: [email protected]

Co-Chairs: Anna Conway and Sharron DeRosier

Core Committee Representative: Todd Zakrajsek

SIG Charge: The POD Network Adjunct/Part-time Faculty Special Interest Group is dedicated to supporting educational developers (ED) who serve and support part-time and adjunct faculty. The POD Adjunct/Part-time SIG provides resources on:

• effective strategies for orienting new adjunct and part-time faculty
• effective strategies for supporting and developing new adjunct and part-time faculty
• trends and issues relating to adjunct and part-time faculty
• developing POD conference proposal submissions relating to adjunct and part-time faculty

AI in Education SIG

Email: [email protected]

Co-Chairs: Emily Rush and Molly Chehak

Core Committee Representative: Bonnie Mullinix

SIG Mission and Focus:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative technology that will continue to impact our work as educators and educational developers.This SIG aims to explore the impact of AI and innovation in education, focusing on its implications for learning, faculty and faculty-support labor, assignment design, evolving tech affordances, concerns about bias, inclusion and equity, copyright, academic integrity and plagiarism, and its implications for educational practice, technologies and policy.

Arts and Humanities (A&H) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Co-Chairs: Mark Phillipson

Core Committee Representative: Scott Hicks

SIG Mission: To create community among educational developers who are trained in arts and humanities fields, including art-making fields. We seek to advance conversations about the arts, humanities, and teaching and learning in three interrelated ways:

• By staging conversations about how humanistic ways of thinking contribute to educational development, including the scholarship of teaching and learning;
• By sharing resources on new or innovative approaches to the teaching of the arts and humanities on our campuses; and
• By nuancing or complicating the narrative of the “crisis” of the humanities within the university.

Within the broader POD community, we seek to generate conversation about diverse disciplinary approaches to SoTL, and raise awareness of advances in arts and humanities pedagogy.

Co-Creation through Partnership (CCP) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Co-Chairs: Heather Dwyer and Scott Hamm

Core Committee Representative: Adriana Signorini

SIG Mission and Focus: The Co-Creation through Partnership (CCP) SIG will collectively emphasize, promote, and support the creation of fruitful partnerships among students, faculty, staff, and administrators—to engage all stakeholders as co-creators and active collaborators in educational development in an effort to enhance teaching, improve student learning, and produce scholarship in higher education. The SIG will play an active and collaborative role in key student-faculty/ staff partnership initiatives at post-secondary institutions, inspire and generate new research about partnerships with our students and faculty/ staff, and encourage faculty and educational developers to implement partnerships in their own scholarly pursuits about teaching and learning. We are a community of colleagues with a range of interests and experiences and share the goal of learning together about co-creation through partnerships.

The CCP SIG objectives are to stimulate new connections with institutions and colleagues working, or hoping to work, in student-faculty/ staff partnership, nurture existing student-faculty/ staff partnership, and foster collaborations with programs at our institutions to advance partnership. The CCP SIG will accomplish these by identifying and sharing strategies and experiences to make the CCP fruitful for stakeholders at our institutions while supporting ongoing efforts to ensure that CCP is developed in respectful and appropriate ways at all institutions of higher learning. The signature work will bring awareness to the POD Network community about the current trends and development of CCP both nationally and internationally, develop new insights in the use of CCP as a lever of change, and reflect upon controversial and provocative ideas that will challenge our thinking and take us in new directions in the future.

Community and Technical Colleges SIG

Email: [email protected]

Co-Chairs: Jessica Tinklenberg and Stephanie Whalen

Core Committee Representative: Patricia Guillen

SIG Mission and Focus: 

The mission of the Community and Technical College SIG is to advance professional development efforts in the unique educational landscapes of two-year community and technical colleges. These efforts engage and support full-time faculty, adjunct faculty, and staff in professional learning experiences using evidence-based practices designed to promote equity and positively impact student success. The Community and Technical College SIG facilitates the sharing of resources and strategies across institutions and also provides a space for educational developers to explore common interests and challenges together. 

To fulfill this mission, the SIG will:

• Encourage conference proposal submissions on topics specific to two-year colleges.
• Facilitate annual conference “Special Interest Group” and “Birds of a Feather” meetings to provide networking opportunities and to explore areas of interest specific to two-year conferences.
• Host a list-serve for two-year colleges that will allow for the exchange of ideas and resources among institutions.
• Promote awareness of challenges and opportunities at two-year colleges to the POD community.

Department-Level Educational Development SIG

Email: [email protected]

Co-Chairs: Elizabeth Dickens, Eva Latterner, and Ruthann Thomas

Core Committee Representative: Shelley Reid

SIG Mission:

The SIG mission is to build a community for educational developers who design and facilitate initiatives that promote change in departments and similar units. Department-level educational development takes several forms, including

• support for curriculum development,
• program assessment and accreditation,
• systematic adoption of evidence-based pedagogies in STEM departments, and
• department-specific programming such as workshops.

The SIG creates a space for educational developers doing any type of department-level work to join a shared conversation and a community to learn from and support one another as we advance pedagogical and curricular change in departments.

The SIG welcomes educational developers doing any form of department-level work, creating a community where we can collectively reflect on our work, our wins, and our challenges, finding commonalities across what have heretofore been separate conversations. By focusing on the shared context—the characteristics of effective educational development with departments—the SIG enables assessment specialists, curriculum specialists, STEM specialists, and many others to learn with and from one another. We aim to raise the profile of department-level educational development and to develop resources, programs, and events for anyone engaged or interested in this work.

Earth-Centered SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chair: Debbie Lichti

Core Committee Representative: Rachel Horak

SIG Mission: Educators play a critical role as humanity faces multiple ecological crises of global significance. The Earth-Centered SIG’s mission is three-fold:

1. To advance and support Earth-centered and resilient pedagogy, curricula, and research that aim to
   1. utilize systems thinking to understand the reciprocal relationship between human well-being and survival and the healthy functioning of all parts of the natural Earth system;
   2. engage students in interdisciplinary, community-engaged, applied whole-person learning that is required for approaching wicked problems such as environmental degradation and climate change;
   3. highlight the inherent and inseparable connections between social justice movements and environmental concerns through the lens of environmental justice; and
   4. foster a resilient teaching and learning ethos that prioritizes responsive teaching and supports faculty to adapt as conditions and events unfold.
2. To empower educational developers and teaching centers to model sustainable and regenerative organizational practices; and
3. To promote a more sustainable POD Network organization, including the annual conference.

Equity and Education (E&E) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chair: Harold McNaron

Core Committee Representative: Adriana Signorini

SIG Mission: The Equity & Education SIG critiques and addresses legacies of racism, colonization, oppression, privilege and power, and systemic inequity that negatively impact the experiences of students, instructors, and educational developers in higher education with the goal of changing individual and institutional practices and policies as they pertain to teaching and learning. The SIG promotes equity-mindedness as a critical, ongoing, reflective and action-oriented process of learning and practices. We ask, “how can we do better?” to inform a process toward equity work by facilitating peer mentoring, a learning community, and collaborative project work. As a member-focused SIG, distinct from a POD Governance Committee, we engage and support educational developers as they work to live up to their equity goals at their institutions as well as their own professional development.

Graduate student, Professional student, and Postdoctoral scholar Development (GPPD) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chair: Francessca Minonne

Core Committee Representative: Claudia Cornejo-Happel

SIG Mission

Drawing on evidence-based practices and with the aim of promoting equitable and inclusive participation in the field of educational development, the purpose of the Graduate Student, Professional Student, & Postdoctoral Scholar Development (GPPD) SIG is to: 

• address common concerns and issues among educational developers of graduate students, professional students, and postdoctoral fellows; 
• foster a sense of community for those engaging in GPPD (whether as developers, students, faculty, or administrators); 
• facilitate sharing of resources and collaborative projects; 
• provide background and information to the larger group of educational developers; contribute to the scholarship of GPPD; 
• foster career development of graduate students, professional students, and postdoctoral scholars; and 
• take a leadership role in contributing to and further defining the field of GPPD.

Healthcare Educational Development SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chair: Jonathan Townsend

Core Committee Representative: Tom Laughner

SIG Mission: The purpose of the Healthcare Educational Development SIG is to create an opportunity where POD Network members working in healthcare educational development can come together to hear and share resources with others in the profession. The SIG will be a sounding board where members can share the challenges they are facing with others facing similar challenges, can discuss clinical practice/instruction and associated issues, and where members can identify Interprofessional education (IPE) resources with clinical faculty in other disciplines.

Learning Analytics Community (LAC) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chair: Christina Bifulco

Core Committee Representative: Lindsay Wheeler

SIG Mission: The Learning Analytics Community (LAC) SIG will collectively advance “data-guided” cultures at our institutions of higher learning, empowering faculty, administrators and educational developers to make appropriate use of learning analytics within the scope of their roles and responsibilities. LAC participants will play an active and collaborative role in key learning analytics initiatives now underway at post secondary institutions, inspire and generate new research about student learning, and encourage faculty  and educational developers to use learning analytics in their own scholarly pursuits about teaching, learning and student success.

Mindfulness and Contemplative Pedagogy (MCP) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Co-Chairs: Kaitlyn Rodriguez and Shradha Tibrewal

Core Committee Representative: Elina Salminen

SIG Mission: The mission of the Mindfulness & Contemplative Pedagogy SIG is to explore and support the implementation and impact of contemplative practices into post-secondary classrooms.

To accomplish this mission, the SIG aims to

• support educational developers interested in cultivating contemplative pedagogy practices and communities on their campuses, and
• foster the development of concrete models of implementation and assessment of these practices in higher education settings.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chair: Holly Parker

Core Committee Representative: Sara Nasrollahien Mojard

SIG Mission: The mission of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) SIG is to support educational developers who seek to advocate for and promote SoTL at their institutions through sharing resources and building a collaborative community of POD Network members interested in SoTL in educational development. To fulfill this mission, this SIG will:

• Host a listserv for SoTL Educational Developers that will allow for the exchange of ideas and resources among institutions;
• Encourage POD conference proposals on SoTL-related topics;
• Foster community by facilitating a meeting of the SIG at the annual POD conference and a virtual meeting in the spring of each year;
• Connect and collaborate with other groups that have a similar focus.

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chair: John Foo

Core Committee Representative: Rachel Horak

SIG Mission: The mission of the STEM SIG is to support and connect colleagues within POD Network who are actively engaged in STEM educational development and instruction. The STEM SIG will provide a stable infrastructure for professional networking and peer assistance within and across STEM fields and institutional categories. It will also create capacity to organize POD Network programming such as conference sessions/workshops and related intervening events (online and in-person). In addition, the STEM SIG seeks to aggregate resources for practitioners who support STEM instruction and instructors and to support the dissemination of scholarship related to STEM educational development. An additional goal is to provide a bridge for communication and coordination with organizations involved in STEM education at a national level.

Small Colleges and Small Centers SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chairs: Lindsey Hamilton

Core Committee Representative: Shelley Reid

SIG Mission:  The mission of the Small Colleges & Small Centers SIG is to create a community around common interests among faculty and educational developers at smaller colleges/universities and in small centers; to promote awareness of challenges and opportunities at small colleges/universities and in small centers to the POD Network community; and to facilitate sessions at the POD Network annual conference and provide resources that would be most helpful to our colleagues.

To subscribe to our SIG mailing list, send an email to small-collegesATpodnetworkDOTorg

Supporting Mentorship Practices and Programs SIG

Email: [email protected]

Chair: April Hawkins

Core Committee Representative: Scott Hicks

SIG Mission and Focus:
The Supporting Mentorship Practices and Programs SIG creates opportunities for cross-institutional conversations and collaborations about mentoring and promotes evidence-based principles and standards for mentoring practices. The SIG supports educational developers, faculty, staff, and graduate students who contribute to any form of faculty mentoring—not just mentoring dyads.

The SIG connects colleagues interested in mentorship who share similar goals and practices across a range of institutional settings. Importantly, the SIG recognizes that many of the challenges in mentorship programming are often the result of inequities and a failure to appropriately recognize, train, and compensate those who contribute to mentoring programs; therefore, the SIG advocates for visibility, recognition, reward, and professional development related to mentoring.

While conversations and SIG initiatives will prepare individuals to lead faculty/instructor focused mentoring programs or to mentor faculty/instructors in their local contexts, this SIG is not a mentoring program like POD Connects groups.

The role of the Presidential Liaison is to serve as a sounding board for either the SIG chair or Core representative on issues that span across committees, have implications for governance, budget, the organization as a whole, or the public face of the organization. The Presidential Liaison does not attend meetings routinely but instead recommends the chair invite the liaison to attend at appropriate times for particular agenda items with these broader implications.

 

President-Elect	President	Past President
Arts and Humanities Community and Technical Colleges Earth-Centered GPPD Healthcare Educational Development Supporting Mentorship Practices and Programs	Accessibility and Disability AI in Education Department-Level Educational Department Equity and Education Mindfulness and Contemplative Pedagogy Small Colleges and Centers	Adjunct/Part-Time Faculty Co-Creation through Partnerships Learning Analytics Community Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) STEM