2012-2015 Core Committee Self-Nomination Statements

Name: Chantal Levesque-Bristol
Title: Professor & Director, Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning
Institution: Missouri State University

Background in Professional and Organizational Development:

I became involved in Professional and Organizational Development in 2003, under the mentorship of Roger G. Sell, past POD president. Through this mentorship, I learned the ropes of professional development and from 2003 - 2008, I served as faculty associate working with Roger Sell in the Academic Development Center (ADC) at Missouri State University. In that role, I lead and collaborated on several professional development workshops and conducted Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) work. I have also been an active participant and member of the POD network since 2003. In the Fall of 2009, I became Director of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTL) at Missouri State University and followed in Rogers' professional development footsteps. The FCTL was created as a transitional form of the ADC which had been in existence since 2002 at Missouri State University.

Since 2009, as Director of the FCTL, I continued to offer professional development and expand the opportunities offered through multiple modes of delivery and to a larger audience of faculty, instructors, teaching staff, and Teaching Assistants, teaching in various modalities (face-to-face, blended, and online). I would invite you to visit the FCTL website at the following link. In the FCTL, we approach everything that we do with an eye toward assessment and evaluation of our effectiveness as it relates to our ability to impact the teaching and learning environment. In the work that we do in the Center, we lead with the following questions: What is it that you want students to learn and how is it that you know that students are achieving the learning outcomes identified? The workshops that we offer invite the instructional community to discuss empirically derived best practices for teaching and learning, student motivation, and how these impact learning in the classroom and beyond. We also develop and conduct programs focusing on the pedagogical application of technologies in a face-to-face and online environment.

In 2010 I became a member of the POD Research Committee and was heavily involved in the analysis of the 2010 POD Membership Survey as well as co-chaired the "Dr. Is In" POD session. First, I co-authored and co-led the POD sponsored session entitled "Where to Next? Exploring the New POD Membership Survey". This session presented the preliminary results of the 2010 POD Membership Survey and then invited attendees to take part in the examination and analysis of the themes that emerged from the survey data. In the future, I will continue my involvement with the analysis and interpretation of the POD Membership Survey. Second, I co-chaired, helped revamp, and co-created a survey designed to assess the "Dr. Is In" POD session. I want to continue my work with the "Dr. Is In" session and work to increase awareness and usefulness of this important service and resource to the POD members.

What would I like to see POD accomplish over the next three years:

What I would like to see POD accomplish over the next three years is twofold. First, I would like to see and be involved in work enhancing and fostering the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) among Professional Development Centers. There is so much opportunity to engage the instructional community we serve as professional developers in SoTL work and I strongly believe that POD can facilitate this movement toward the enhancement of SoTL work. With the frequent discussions on accountability from the Department of Higher Education and Accreditation Commissions, such as HLC and SACS, Professional Development units can play a major role in helping institutions of higher education meet the accountability challenges by engaging the instructional community in scholarship work documenting the effectiveness of the pedagogies we teach and disseminate.

Second, I would like to see POD more actively and intentionally involved in supporting the research efforts of POD members. The focus of my work with the Research Committee fits squarely with this goal. This could be done with programs and sessions like the "Dr. Is In" session which offer quantitative and qualitative research consultations as well as materials and resources to support scholarship. In addition, research within POD could be supported by the coordination of cross-institutional research efforts as well as the development of research collaborations and partnerships between POD members. This has actually been requested specifically by POD members through the 2010 Membership Survey.

Thank you for your consideration!