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In November we traveled to Chicago to attend the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD) conference entitled: “Relationships at the Core of Educational Development.” The conference was built around four main ideas: 1) All students must experience genuine welcome and deep care; 2) Relationships are a powerful means to inspire all students to learn; 3) All students must develop webs of significant relationships; and, 4) All students need meaningful relationships to help them––and to challenge them––to explore the big questions in their lives. Over 1700 people attended the conference which offered interactive sessions, research talks, poster presentations, and a variety of keynotes. POD is known as the largest educational development community of practice in the United States and is also one of the most welcoming organizations. Early morning activities included meditation, yoga, and exercise events for those interested, and every day there were multiple ways for new attendees to meet people and feel comfortable. We thought that the best way to disseminate material from this conference was to offer our own insight on one or more conference highlights.��

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Kristal’s Reflection:

As a first-time attendee, I was eager to connect with and learn from peers working in faculty development centers. Each session offered opportunities to explore innovative ways to support faculty growth and development.

To start the conference, I attended Center Relationships with Colleagues During Organizational Change. This interactive workshop was designed for Educational Program Developers and focused on positive strategies for navigating transitions within higher education institutions.

The session aimed to:

• Deepen our understanding of how we and our colleagues communicate during challenging situations.
• Reflect on ways to strengthen relationships with colleagues amid organizational change.

The session began with an overview, followed by an introduction to intercultural conflict styles. Participants started by identifying their personal intercultural conflict styles, selecting between direct or indirect methods that were either emotionally restrained or emotionally expressive. Once individual frameworks were established, we paired up to discuss how institutions react to changes and shared personal experiences with organizational transitions.

Reflection and Discussion Prompts

• Where do you see yourself in terms of intercultural conflict style? Where do you see your colleague(s)?
• What are the strengths and perceived weaknesses associated with each person’s style? How does positionality shape the way communication styles are perceived?
• How can these insights help improve communication with colleagues?
• What other approaches have you found effective for navigating change with colleagues?

During these discussions and reflections, I connected with peers and gained valuable insights into how professionals approach communication during organizational transitions. We shared strategies for managing change, identified areas for improvement, and addressed common challenges. The session concluded with group reports and a lively discussion about fostering meaningful conversations. Change is a constant in higher education, and both administrators and faculty were enthusiastic about exchanging ideas to navigate it effectively.

Another session, Orchestrating Great Beginnings: Setting the Tone for Learning, was a dynamic workshop dedicated to helping faculty rethink syllabus and course design. Syllabi serve as a crucial connection between faculty and students, and this session encouraged participants to consider fresh approaches to setting the tone for their courses.

Participants worked individually to brainstorm ways to create engaging syllabi, then shared their ideas by writing them on sticky notes and posting them on large sheets of paper displayed around the room. The activity extended to exploring creative strategies for day-one course design, fostering a sense of community and enthusiasm for learning.

The workshop aimed to reinvigorate educational developers by inspiring them to build instructional capacity for "great beginnings" in diverse teaching and learning contexts.

As an Educational Program Developer, I left with actionable ideas to help faculty improve their first-day practices. The goal is to create an inviting and engaging atmosphere that excites students about learning. Faculty often have established first-day rituals, but this session encouraged them to refresh their approaches and consider new methods to engage students effectively. Participants departed energized and ready to apply these ideas in the upcoming semester.

Annette’s Reflection:

I was most excited to attend the final anchor session of the conference entitled, “Expanding Our Audiences: Translating Teaching into Our Writing Practices.” Faculty developer James Lang, professor of practice at the University of Notre Dame’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, was the featured speaker. Lang is the author of many books including Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. (See the review in this edition of FacSheet). Since the final anchor session often points towards themes for the next annual conference, I was pleased to see a focus on the underappreciated connection between teaching and writing. Lang was also pitching his new book, Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience (University of Chicago Press, 2025).

The conference themes mentioned above focused most heavily on building relationships with students, so it was interesting to listen to Lang underscore what instructors can learn from their own teaching practices. He was pondering what we can give back to ourselves as part of the teaching experience. Lang asked, “What connections exist between teaching and writing, and how can we use these connections to make us better writers, ones that appeal to larger audiences?”

Lang began his talk by noting that most academics write for peers within their disciplines and most disciplines have a specialized jargon that “insiders” know but “outsiders” can find challenging, unimaginative, and dull. In pushing ourselves to improve as writers by learning to write more creative and/or exciting prose, Lang suggested we think about what we do in our classrooms to capture student attention. His suggestions were straightforward and reflect what we already know about preparing our courses. In teaching or writing, he suggested that we provide a solid outline, tell a good story, shift up formats, highlight key words, ask complex questions, and use illustrations for discussion. He explained that it is important to know the audience and to develop defined learning objectives. Lang articulated that we know what we want students to take away from our classes, but wondered aloud if we consider strongly enough how we want our readers to be changed by reading our work? He argued that in our classes students may never remember tables of data beyond the final exam, but they might remember a story we tell for the rest of their lives. That story humanizes us to our students and could do the same for our readers.

The rest of the session was devoted to both interactive discussion with tablemates and reflective writing. Lang managed to get the audience to leave the session having identified the “why” question for our next writing project, the project’s learning objectives, and the audience of potential readers. Concluding remarks offered advice on revising and editing final drafts and “pitching” manuscript ideas to publishers. For conference attendees who stayed in Chicago for the final session, the message Lang offered was significant: great teaching practices translate into great writing practices.