Current Newsletter

Dear Educational Leadership faculty: the February 2025 newsletter includes information about EL mentoring, professional learning, and funding opportunities. You can find this same content and more, as well as past newsletters on the ELNet website. Visit the website at: https://elnet.sites.olt.ubc.ca

1. ELNet Announcements
   • Message from ELNet Chair
   • Sign up for an EL Mentor
   • Help build a dossier resource for EL faculty
2. PD Resources and Opportunities
   • CTLT/CTL Workshops
   • Other Workshops (dossiers, decolonization, and more)
   • Professional Coaching
3. SoTL
   • The Sphere
   • Educational Technology Users Group workshop (Mar 14 application deadline) 
   • Canadian Collaborative Writing Groups (Mar 10 application deadline)

1. EL Net Announcements

Message from the ELNet Chair

Happy hearts month❤️ I like to call February “I love teaching month!” As we hit this very busy midterm time of the semester, it is a great opportunity to focus on what we love about teaching as inspiration for the rest of the term. As well, feedback, movement, and connection can support our well-being during busy times.

Many of you ask students for informal midpoint feedback to gain insights about how your courses are going. Midterm feedback provides an excellent means to connect more with our students in a mutually supportive way. Click to learn more about midterm feedback.

For movement, I hope you’ve been engaging in the MOVE U campaign this month, which encourages you, your students, and colleagues to move in enjoyable ways.  Movement is so key for our heart health, mental health, and learning success.  Please see the MOVE UBC website for more information.

Lastly, you may have seen that the EL10 survey report has now been circulated and is also posted on our website.  A key theme emerging through this research and report was the importance of support and mentoring in the EL stream.  This is a key mandate of ELNET and we invite you to reach out, join us on the committee and at our events, and for mentoring. Together we can do so much more!

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

Sign up for an EL Mentor

The ELNET Mentoring Program pairs interested EL faculty with a more established mentor for EL-specific support and connection. The opportunity to be paired with a mentor is available anytime during the academic year and at any career stage.

The start of a new year is a great time to seek mentorship as you set educational leadership and development goals for the months ahead and/or if you are heading for reappointment, promotion, and/or tenure in the next year or two. Please visit the link below for more details of our mentoring program and how to get connected:

https://elnet.sites.olt.ubc.ca/mentoring/

Help us build a dossier resource for EL Faculty

We’re gathering tables of contents from faculty dossiers across disciplines to create a resource that supports EL promotion to Professor of Teaching. 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.

PD Resources and Opportunities

CTLT Workshops (UBC-V)

Click here to see a full list of events from the Vancouver campus Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology. They have a number of upcoming offerings on AI, inclusive teaching, and decolonizing teaching practices.

CTL Workshops (UBC-O)

Click here to see a full list of events from the Okanagan campus Centre for Teaching and Learning. Upcoming topics include open education, associated materials publishing concerns, reconciliation coffee hours, and a faculty book club offering.

Other Relevant Resources and Workshops

Decolonizing Higher Education Systems in Canada
Feb 27 | 12:30–2:00pm | Online
Online colloquium with Dr. Sheila Cote-Meek, Director and Professor of Indigenous Educational Studies at Brock University. Register.


Preparing a Teaching Portfolio: Guidance and Practical Tips
March 3 | 10:00am | Online
This workshop focuses on how to create, upgrade, and polish a teaching dossier. Hosted by the Chemistry Education Division of the Chemical Institute of Canada, it is open to EL faculty beyond chemistry education. The three panelists are (originally) from chemistry departments, but their SOTL work has implications beyond chemistry or science education. They have all won pan-disciplinary institutional, regional, and/or national teaching awards, so they know how to craft a dossier that can speak to wider audiences. Register.
 

National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity
NCFDD is an independent professional development, training, and mentoring community of faculty, postdocs, and graduate students. UBC faculty have access to NCFDD membership and their offerings, including 14-day writing challenges and more. Activate your membership.

UBC Coaching Services

UBC faculty can receive support from professional coaches through Coaching @UBC. Many of our members have benefited! Learn more about coaching services at HR’s coaching and career development site.

3. SoTL

The Sphere

The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education puts out a regular newsletter called The Sphere. It covers all things teaching and learning in higher ed in Canada. For SoTL Canada, this is a primary advertising area. If you are an STLHE member and not aware of The Sphere, check it out. As well, others may be interested in the free resource section of the association website. 

Educational Technology Users Group Workshop – proposals due Mar 14

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.
 
UBC educators, instructional designers, educational technologists and librarians are encouraged to submit a proposal for sessions that explore, innovate or improve teaching and learning with technology. Sessions can showcase educational technology in action, strategies for collaborating with faculty, lessons learned from failures, or work-in progress ideas. Proposals can be submitted for both interactive presentation and demos.
 
Should this interest you, please submit a session proposal by March 14, 2025. Further details, including topic suggestions and submission guidelines can be found on the website: https://etug.ca/spring-workshop-2025-call-for-presenters/ 

Canadian Collaborative Writing Groups – applications due Mar 10

SoTL Canada invites applications for group members for the Canadian Collaborative Writing Group (CCWG) initiative. Applications for Group Members are invited for five different groups based on projects and facilitators that have already been identified. Below are brief descriptions of each of the five projects and information on how to apply. 

1. An Empirical Study of Funding for SoTL Research at the National Level in Canada
   • Motivated by the question of how to increase SoTL funding at the national level, this group will conduct an empirical study to determine what is the current state of national funding in Canada for SoTL research. Using publicly available information including SSHRC competition results and recipients’ webpages and publications, the group will conduct a content analysis to understand who has received funding (recipients’ roles, disciplines and institutions) and for what topics, contexts, and approaches.
   • Group Lead: Janice Miller-Young
2. Examining Supports and Challenges for Engaging SoTL within Teaching-intensive Spaces
   • This CCWG aims to explore how the recognition and support of SoTL in teaching-intensive roles/institutions occurs across the country. Simmons and Poole (2016) acknowledged that much of the SoTL work is done by volunteers and explored ways to support and recognize those efforts. Nearly a decade later, this collaborative team will explore pathways for the advancement of SoTL especially in teaching-intensive roles/institutions across the country and throughout a variety of institutional types.
   • Group Lead: Sonja Johnston
3. Developing a National Guide for Ethics in SoTL
   • Are you a researcher seeking to address the challenges of SoTL ethics applications? Join our writing group to collaboratively examine systemic barriers in Canada, including inconsistent TCPS2 interpretation, limited training, and institutional constraints. Through an environmental scan, we aim to map current practices and develop comprehensive training guides for both applicants and reviewers. This initiative seeks to build a scholarly community, streamline ethics processes, and enhance the recognition and impact of SoTL within Canadian academia.
   • Group Leads: Christine Bell and Kate Thompson
4. What Are Your Experiences with Grades? A Phenomenological Study
   • Regardless of our role(s) in higher education, we have all received grades, and many assign grades to students. Relative to assessment, little literature engages directly with this ubiquitous reality of grades. We will deepen that scholarship by investigating our own lived experiences of grades (see Kensington-Miller et al., 2021; Webb & Welsh, 2019). Ideally, members bring various perspectives (e.g., identities, disciplines, career stages, department norms), opinions, and experience with phenomenology or other qualitative methods.
   • Group Lead: Catherine Rawn (UBC)
5. Advancing SoTL in Canadian Colleges: A Collaborative Model for Recognition, Validation, and Growth
   • This group aims to explore pathways for further fostering SoTL within Canadian colleges, emphasizing the unique contributions of industry-aligned programming. Many college instructors are industry experts who transition into teaching roles, bringing with them a wealth of professional experience from diverse sectors. Areas of potential focus include advocating for the recognition of SoTL as a valuable area of applied research, celebrating and disseminating exemplary practices already underway in college settings, and addressing critical challenges unique to colleges such as instructor workloads that include research hours in addition to teaching and limited institutional support for non-formal SoTL work.
   • Group Leads: Matthew May and Lisa King

If any of these exciting projects sound interesting to you, please click here to apply to be a member of these groups. You will be asked to pick your top two projects, and members will be selected based on interest and an effort to create strong diverse teams.

The current timeline has groups actively working from April 2025 – March 2026 with tentative milestones being:

• 10 March 2025 – SCWG participant applications are due
• 31 March 2025 – SCWG participants contacted
• April – June 2025: SCWGs work at a distance and prepare abstracts, plans, and identified needs for group projects.
• June 2025 – SCWGs work together in Saskatoon: synchronous working session immediately before the STLHE conference. Attend the STLHE conference.
• June 2025 – March 2026: SCWG cohort and individual groups continue working until completion of final submission
• March 2026: Final articles should be ready for submission, recommend presenting at STLHESAPES2026.

The SCWGs will convene for a synchronous working session immediately before the STLHESAPES2025 conference in Saskatoon, SK (June 2025). Before and after the conference, the groups will work together online to ultimately produce a publishable manuscript. It is hoped that all ICWG leaders, group facilitators, and participants will attend the pre-conference working session in person, to register for and attend the conference, and to be (or become) SOTL Canada members. We recognize that financial factors may be an issue and encourage groups to develop a personalized plan for their meeting.

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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)