April 2025 Newsletter - UBC Educational Leadership Network

Happy Summer from the ELNet Team!

Dear Educational Leadership faculty,

This newsletter includes information about an EL dossier support project, professional learning, and funding opportunities. You can find this same content and more, as well as past newsletters on the ELNet website.

ELNet Announcements
- Message from ELNet Chair
- Help still needed! Building a dossier resource for EL faculty
PD Resources and Opportunities
- CTLT/CTL Workshops
SoTL
- SoTL Workshops
- Funding Opportunities

1. ELNet Announcements

Message from the ELNet Chair

Happy spring ELers! I’m wishing you all a positive end to this winter term. It is always a very busy time of year but along with it hopefully comes a feeling of satisfaction of the incredible work you have done, and the great impact you have had on your students.

Take a bit of time to replenish YOU and reflect on your term. What brought you joy in your teaching and leadership? What went well? And what are some areas that you want to address? I find these questions helpful as I navigate May and June with the many teaching and learning workshops, conferences and grant opportunities.

As you review the many opportunities announced in the newsletter below, I encourage you to choose a few that interest you and, where you can, attend in person. It’s a wonderful way to connect with your colleagues and find synergies, collaboration potential, and inspiration for your EL and teaching work. Connection is so impactful for both our personal and professional health.

Lastly, we are inviting new members to join our ELNET executive so please reach out to me if you are interested. Thank you and enjoy!

Sally Willis-Stewart
sally.willis-stewart@ubc.ca

Help us build a dossier resource for EL Faculty

We are still gathering tables of contents from faculty dossiers across disciplines to create a resource that supports EL promotion to Professor of Teaching–and need a few more samples, please (yes, yours would be great!).

Specifically, we’re seeking tables of contents from dossiers successfully used for promotion from Associate Professor of Teaching to Professor of Teaching. We already have a collection featuring examples for promotion from Assistant to Associate Professor of Teaching, so this resource will help fill an important gap.

If you’re willing to contribute, please email Isabeau Iqbal (Educational Developer, CTLT) at isabeau.iqbal@ubc.ca. Thank you to those who have already generously contributed.

2. PD Resources and Opportunities

CTLT/CTL Workshops

Program for Open Scholarship and Education
May–July 2025 | Online
This 3-month flexible and blended program helps participants develop an understanding of open scholarship in higher education and the intersections of each area: open access, education, data, and research. Register by May 1.

Celebrate Learning Week
May 5–9 | Online, In-person & Multi-access
Join us for a week-long campus-wide initiative of events exploring how individuals and institutions navigate transformation—whether through small, everyday shifts or large-scale initiatives. Browse event s.

Keynote Designing for Justice: On Navigating Change as a Critical Pedagogue
Student Panel Students as Catalysts for Change in Teaching and Learning
Faculty Panel Cross Faculty Collaborations: Innovations for Cultivating Growth
Leadership Panel Connecting Within and Across Campuses: Fostering Collaborations that Support Meaningful Change

Course Design Studios
Course Design Studio sessions are designed to provide practical strategies for anyone involved in designing courses and learning experiences. Browse events.

May 7 Assessment Strategies for Large Enrolment Classes
June 3 Generating Visual Elements Using Napkin AI, ChatGPT
July 16 Play to Learn: Transforming Student Learning Through Gamification

ETUG Workshops for May

An Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG) workshop, is being hosted at UBC Vancouver from May 22–23, 2025. ETUG is a community that exists to empower and inspire all who design, develop, and support learning experiences. This year’s theme, “Show Me How You Did It: Getting Back to Hands-On in EdTech,” focuses on practical, real-world applications.

3. SoTL

Workshops

Funding

The SoTL Seed Program is now accepting proposals. This program provides graduate research assistants, collegial support, and complementary funding for projects that seek to research and evaluate impactful pedagogies. Deadline is May 20, 2025.

The SoTL Dissemination Fund continues to accept applications on a rolling basis. This fund supports the publishing and dissemination of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning work and may be used to cover journal processing fees, conference registration, travel costs, etc.

Upcoming Events

Planning is starting for the next CHES Celebrate SoTL event on Thursday October 9, 2025 at UBCV. Please save the date! We are hoping this group will help us identify a topic of interest of our first session of the day (keynote or roundtable, depending on topic). Please share your ideas about what would be useful for UBC’s SoTL community.

Best wishes and don’t hesitate to be in touch if you have content to share in future newsletters,

Kathryn Accurso on behalf of the UBC Educational Leadership Network Executive Team (ELNet)