Thoughts of Spring

Sending a newsletter in the evening on the last day of the month counts as making the deadline, right?

Life has been busy on fronts both personal and professional – all the usual Simmons University programming including facilitating a Snafu Edu book club and hosting thought-provoking sessions by faculty colleagues on managing classroom disruptions and countering anti-fat bias in classes across disciplines. Work on our Summer Teaching Institute also has already begun!

My NSF grant team has been so busy prepping for a big hybrid Boston/online meeting of my TUnE-Bio network, I've been working on the new book, I caught up on matters affective at the annual Society for Affective Science conference and am looking forward to sharing some thoughts on pedagogical feedback as an act of care at AACU: Conference on Learning & Student Success in a few weeks with (one of) my partner(s)-in-crime Bryan Dewsbury. If you'll be at CLASS, come say hey - we're Friday at 2pm. (There may be a board game component).

Below are some great happenings and thinkenings that have recently caught my attention - abbreviated because while I'm respecting my commitment to communicate monthly I'm also respecting my commitment to reading fiction and sleeping.

BE THE SPARK - Thoughts on Teaching and Learning

It being spring, it is time to put together your proposals for the annual virtual gathering of educational developers - see below for links and more information.

Michael McCreary, one of the principal organizers of this conference, also has put together an extremely helpful resource for the many of us who are working to improve the efficacy and equitability of end-semester teaching evaluations. Check it out:

A practical guide to modern teaching evaluation

Dozens of institutions are piloting new ways to evaluate college teaching beyond student surveys. Here are the six steps they’re taking to fix a broken system.

Engaged Learning CollectiveMichael McCreary

In personal news, it was a delight to again join Rebecca Mushtare and John Kane on their Tea for Teaching podcast to talk about my TUnE-Bio network's efforts to improve feedback in pedagogy, especially STEM pedagogy.

TUnE Bio

Students planning to major in STEM fields, especially students from groups historically underrepresented in these fields, are often deterred by their experiences in introductory courses. In this episode, Sarah Rose Cavanagh joins us to discuss an NSF-funded initiative designed to enhance student success in introductory Biology classes. Sarah is a psychologist and the author of four books related to teaching and learning. She is the senior associate director for teaching and learning and associate professor of practice at Simmons University and also is a regular contributor to The Chronicle and many other publications. Sarah often serves as a keynote speaker and we were very fortunate to have her join us for a keynote address at a recent Academic Affairs Retreat on our campus. A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.

PodBeanPodBean Development

I was honored that Vevox's review panel included me on their list of top 50 voices in higher education for the year, and even more honored that Simmons decided to highlight this in a news story.

INCIDENTALLY - Writing That Will Break Your Heart

One of my top parasocial relationships of the twenty-teens was musher and dogsled racer Blair Braverman. These were the halcyon days of Twitter, when the internet still felt like a fresh exciting place where you could find like-minded thinkers across the globe and where you could discover worlds you never even really knew existed. Braverman was not just a dogsled racer but also a talented word-slinger and photographer. She really knew how to lean into the micro-blogging format. Her long threads spilling out stories about her various pups and their vibrant and distinct personalities, accompanied by photos that were funny and touching, were a true highlight of the birdsite.

She was married to Quince Mountain, a burly fellow sled racer with his own Very Online personality. They felt like personal friends, as did Flame and Leap and Clem with all their doggy foibles and predilections.

When Twitter died, Braverman tried to replicate the magic elsewhere, but the format didn't really work on other platforms. Facebook post were too long format, LinkedIn drowned her out in AI slop, there just weren't enough people on BlueSky. I honestly sort of lost touch and forgot about her and her pups.

Until she recently wrote a long-form photo essay in the New York Times Magazine, about both her separation from Quince and her retirement from racing. "In losing him, losing the witness to my life," she writes, "I felt our years together becoming less real, flattened into one human memory instead of two. That’s the thing about divorce: You’re losing not just the future you pictured, but also the past as you knew it." Now divorced, no long racing, she decides to take the ole pups for a last sojourn in the wilderness. To reconnect with that past in one very physical way, to spend time with the other witnesses of this journey, of those precious years.

There are their canine faces, so adored by me and the legions of Braverman's followers. Their legs creaky, no longer as fast, no longer in a race against anything but age and death. Blair, with her heart broken by these beloveds in decline, by her lost marriage, by our collective loss of that more innocent and hopeful time of life. Me, crying in a Barnes & Noble.

Life. So hard, so fleeting. But words and stories and images connecting us.