2007 Conference Information

32^nd Annual Conference, October 25-28, 2007
Omni William Penn Hotel
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.

Please read this information completely before preparing your registration form. You may scroll through the information, or you may link to the various segments as indicated in the directory below.

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• View Complete 2007 Conference Program (1.6 meg PDF)
   
• Invitation to attend
• Overview of the POD Network and Conference
• 2007 Conference theme
• Topical Areas
• Schedule at a glance
• Conference fees
• Plenary sessions
• Topical interest groups
• Pre-conference workshops (descriptions and costs)
• Educational expeditions
• Special activities requiring advance planning
  • Job fair
  • Graduate Student Professional Developer breakfast
  • Resource fair
  • Vendor exhibit
• Hotel reservations and shipping information
• Travel information

• Registration forms and registration instructions

  • 2007 Conference Registration Form - Electronic format (use this form for secure electronic conference registration)

  • 2007 Conference Registration Form – HTML format (use this printable version for Fax or mailing)

Invitation to Attend

Dear Colleagues,

You are enthusiastically invited to attend the 2007 POD Conference to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., from October 25–28. Our theme, “Purpose, Periphery, and Priorities,” offers an opportunity for engagement and reflection within the networking tradition that is a hallmark of POD.

Those who have attended a POD conference in the past know that this is not your typical academic meeting. If you are new to the organization, we heartily welcome you to a uniquely friendly and nurturing community of colleagues.

At this conference, you will experience interactive workshops, plenary sessions, roundtable discussions, and posters.  We promote dialogue among colleagues outside of formal sessions through shared meals, educational expeditions, and the resource fair, where colleagues freely share ideas and materials with one another.  At the Saturday evening banquet, we will celebrate past achievements and look forward together to the future. 

There are three new features this year: 

1.   Through Topical Interest Groups, newcomers and experienced folks alike are invited to gather and discuss common interests. 

2.   We are hosting a Vendor Exhibit for publishers and consultants to sell their materials and services. 

3.   At the same time as the Saturday evening dance, a student jazz ensemble will perform in an informal setting conducive to conversation.  (Of note, Pittsburgh is home to many jazz musicians and educational programs.) 

We are delighted to be hosting the conference at the Omni William Penn Hotel, a beautifully restored historic landmark in the center of town.  The hotel is rich with detail and is situated close to the bridges, inclines, and vistas that define Pittsburgh.  

We encourage you to register for the conference by September 21 in order to take advantage of the early bird conference rate and to reserve your room at the conference hotel.  The pre-conference sessions are scheduled for Thursday, October 25, and the opening dinner and president’s address will be held that evening.  Please plan on staying through Sunday morning so that you can take advantage of the concurrent sessions scheduled then.

Teaching, learning, and professional and organizational development issues continue to grow in importance in higher education.  As POD’s international membership and conference attendance increases, we expect this year’s theme to foster engaging comparisons of different cultural, institutional, and personal priorities. We hope that our time together will inspire your work, stimulate your thinking, and refresh your spirit.

Please join us in Pittsburgh for an enriching and rejuvenating conference!

Sincerely,
Peter Felten and Therese Huston, Conference Chairs
Kathryn Plank and Laurel Willingham-McLain, Program Chairs
 

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Overview of the POD Network and Conference

The POD Network

POD supports a network of over 1,600 members who have an interest in educational and organizational development. While POD members come primarily from the U.S.A. and Canada, the membership also represents 20 other countries. Through its members the POD Network leads and supports change for the improvement of higher education through faculty, instructional, and organizational development.

The POD Network seeks to promote these values:

• Scholarship

• Participation

• Interaction

• Collaboration

• Inclusion

The POD Mission

The POD Network in Higher Education fosters human development in higher education through faculty, graduate student, instructional, and organizational development. POD believes that people have value, as individuals and as members of groups. POD considers the development of students a fundamental purpose of higher education that requires for its success effective advising, teaching, leadership, and management. Central to POD's philosophy is lifelong, holistic, personal, and professional learning, growth, and change for the higher education community.

The POD Annual Conference

The annual conference attracts over 700 people, and primarily targets practitioners in educational development, both novice and experienced. The conference also appeals to these groups:

• Administrators

• Faculty

• Graduate student developers

• Graduate students

• Independent consultants

• Publishers for the above audiences

• Members of higher education organizations

 Collectively, program sessions do the following:

• Actively engage participants

• Reflect current research and theoretical frameworks

• Involve colleagues from around the world

• Address the needs of graduate students and both new and experienced faculty

• Include elements for personal growth

• Describe working partnerships

• Demonstrate diversity in cultures, collaborations, and planning

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2007 Conference Theme

Pittsburgh’s landscape is dominated by the three rivers that surround the city, as featured in the conference logo. The rivers are constantly in motion around the city, shaping its borders and helping to define its landscape. Likewise, each of us sets our priorities, both individually and collectively, but things in the periphery continually reshape and test that sense of purpose.

 This year’s conference invites participants to raise important questions about what we choose to prioritize in higher education and what we choose to leave in the periphery. For good work to be done, it is important to prioritize some goals over others, but when we effectively focus our attention on one complex task, we often lose sight of others. This balance between priority and periphery, therefore, raises important questions:

• How do we make choices about our purpose and priorities in the academy and in our professional lives?

• What should be at the center of who we are and what we do, and what do we intentionally put in the periphery?

• What is currently in the periphery that should be brought back in to clearer focus?

We look for this conference to elicit research findings and practical strategies to help make these discernments and put them into practice. Sessions, mealtime conversations, and educational expeditions will stimulate dialogues around these issues as we collaborate in this effort to become more mindful of our choices. We anticipate that the diversity within POD will foster discussion of different perspectives and the opportunity to respectfully challenge one another’s assumptions about priority and periphery.

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Topical Areas

Each conference session fits one or more of these conference topical areas.

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Schedule at a Glance

Pre-conference sessions begin Thursday, October 25, at 8:30 am. The opening conference dinner and President’s Address will be Thursday evening at 6:30 pm. Concurrent sessions begin on Friday, October 26, at 8:30 am. The conference will end on Sunday, October 28 at 11:15 am. You won’t want to miss a minute of this exciting conference. Please make your travel plans so that you can stay until the conclusion of the conference for maximum learning and networking.

Wednesday, October 24

Thursday, October 25

Friday October 26

Saturday October 27

Sunday, October 28

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Conference Fees

Conference registration fees are outlined below. They are also detailed on the registration form.  These fees are in U.S. dollars, and payment must be made in U.S. dollars.

Please Note:  Due to significantly higher food prices in Pittsburgh, the 2007 conference fees needed to be increased. While this is regrettable, it is necessary to preserve POD’s tradition of communal meals and networking. In this spirit we’ll be offering three light continental breakfasts on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning in addition to the usual two lunches and two dinners.

All conference participants are required to be current members of the POD Network. (N.B. International membership applies to persons from countries other than Canada, Mexico, and the United States.)  Non-member fees include a one-year membership.

Please note that the conference registration fee includes the designated conference meals (see Schedule at a Glance).

Pre-conference workshops, educational expeditions, and the graduate student developer breakfast are all optional activities, and fees for these are in addition to the registration and membership fees.

Membership fees:

Pre-Conference Workshop Fees

Pre-conference workshops are presented in half-day and full-day formats. The fee for a full-day workshop is $125. The half-day workshop fee is $75. The discounted fee for two half-day workshops is $125. For some workshops a special materials fee is included. See the pre-conference workshop section for more details.

Vendor Exhibit

The fee for conference registrants to have exhibit space is $50, and for non-registrants, $200.

Educational Expeditions

The fees vary, and are included in the descriptions of the expeditions.

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Plenary Sessions

Friday, October 26, 1:00 – 2:00 pm

“Reasonable Accommodation: Disability Studies and Liberal Education”

Michael Bérubé, Paterno Family Professor in Literature at The Pennsylvania State University

Michael Bérubé is the author of six books and editor of two more, including: Life As We Know It:  A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child (Pantheon, 1996; paper edition, Vintage, 1998); What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and “Bias” in Higher Education (W. W. Norton, 2006) and Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Bérubé has written over a hundred and fifty essays for a wide variety of academic journals such as American Quarterly, the Yale Journal of Criticism, Social Text, and Modern Fiction Studies, as well as more popular venues such as Harper's, the New Yorker, Dissent, The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the Nation, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and the Boston Globe. Life As We Know It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 1996 and was chosen as one of the best books of the year (on a list of seven) by Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio.

Saturday, October 27, 10:30 – 11:30 am

“Making Learning a Priority: Insights from Minority High Achievers”

Sharon Fries-Britt, Associate Professor of Education Policy and Leadership, College of Education, University of Maryland

Sharon Fries-Britt’s research and many publications focus on the academic, social and psychological experiences of college students. She is a Co-Principal Investigator on a grant to study race, equity and diversity in the 23 southern and border states funded by the Lumina Foundation. She is particularly interested in the experiences of high ability Black collegians and their interactions with faculty, peers and the extended Black community. She is a consultant and research associate for the National Society of Black Physicists exploring patterns of success in minority physicists. Fries-Britt previously has been a Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and she served for nearly ten years as the Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs at the University of Maryland College Park. She currently serves on the National Advisory Board for the ERIC Clearinghouse and as a member of The College Board’s National Task Force on Minority High Achievement.
 

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Topical Interest Groups

As conference attendance continues to grow, we want to maintain the informal community traditions upon which POD is built by providing an opportunity for colleagues to gather around common interests.  We are exploring interest groups as a means to bring together newcomers and more experienced educational developers, and to promote deeper interaction than can sometimes occur in conference sessions.

We will designate a place and facilitator for each of the 11 conference topics both on Thursday at 8:30 pm and at the Saturday morning breakfast at 7:30 am.

In addition to topical interest groups, we will continue the Saturday lunch tradition of “name your own topic,” where colleagues can designate any topic they like and invite others to the table for discussion.

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Pre-Conference Workshops

Pre-conference workshop enrollment is limited.
Sign up early to reserve a space!

 Full-day Pre-conference Workshop

W-1.  Getting Started: Workshop for New Faculty Developers

Todd Zakrajsek, Central Michigan University; Michael Sweet and Karron Lewis, University of Texas – Austin; Phyllis Worthy Dawkins, Johnson C. Smith University; James Eison, University of South Florida

Thursday, October 25, 8:30 am – 4:30 pm

This session is designed to assist new faculty developers in gaining the skills necessary to be effective and to help them determine which activities will best serve their campuses. The session will include communication with participants before the workshop to help co-create the day's agenda. Led by experienced faculty developers from diverse institutions, "Getting Started" will address specific needs of the participants and even have "breakouts" to address a variety of issues. The goal for the day will be for each participant to walk away with concrete ideas of ways to best move forward at their own institution.

Fee: $175
(Includes workshop fee, a copy of The Guide to Faculty Development, and lunch)

Half-day Pre-conference Workshops

A discount of $25 will be applied if you sign up for both a morning and afternoon half-day pre-conference workshop. This discount has already been applied to the price for W-1.

Thursday lunch is not included except for workshop W-1.

Morning Workshops

W-2.  Bringing Assessment Results to the Faculty

Thomas Nelson Laird, Jillian Kinzie and Todd Chamberlain, Indiana University

Thursday, October 25, 8:30 am – 12 pm

Under growing pressure from multiple constituencies, campuses need to demonstrate how they use assessment results to guide efforts aimed at improving undergraduate education. This workshop presents applications of the combined use of pre-college, engagement, and faculty data to inform productive discussions about teaching, learning, and the quality of students’ educational experiences. Workshop participants will gain a greater understanding of results from the National Survey of Student Engagement and its two companion surveys. Participants will discuss how to effectively bring such results to different groups of faculty and develop specific plans for using assessment results in their own work.

Fee: $75

W-3.  With Mindful Purpose: Coaching as a Strategy for Teaching Consultations

Deandra Little and Michael Palmer, University of Virginia

Thursday, October 25, 8:30 am – 12 pm

Using professional coaching techniques in consultation settings enables us to act as agents of positive change promoting effective faculty development. After an overview of coaching and how it relates to common consultation roles, participants will engage in a series of exercises to practice three key coaching components we've adapted for consultations—Deep Listening, Powerful Questioning, and Prompting Action—and to take on the roles of coach, coachee, and observer. This highly interactive session will conclude by discussing the benefits and challenges of this technique, including ways to be mindful of cultural, developmental, and personal differences that may require different strategies.

Fee: $75

W-4.  Motivations and Attitudes: The Affective Domain in Teaching and Learning

Jeff Johnston, Vanderbilt University; Cathy Manduca, Carleton College; Ed Nuhfer, California State University, Channel Islands; James Rhem, The National Teaching & Learning FORUM

Thursday, October 25, 8:30 am – 12 pm

When we think of teaching and learning in a college classroom, we usually focus on the cognitive domain: the skills and concepts that students must master to learn the course content. However, the affective domain plays a critical role in student learning. It governs students’ willingness to learn, ability to accept new ideas, and motivation to seek and use new knowledge. Organizations’ influences on affective domains affect true diversity and creativity. This session invites participants to consider how the affective domain influences their own philosophies of faculty development, and to develop strategies for incorporating affective issues into their work as faculty developers.

Fee: $75

W-5.  Capitalizing on Diversity: Using Collaborative Learning to Engage All Learners

Elizabeth Barkley, Foothill College

Thursday, October 25, 8:30 am – 12 pm

Many faculty struggle with diversity, searching for ways to accommodate the multiple and varied needs of a wide range of students. Collaborative learning converts student diversity from a challenge to an asset by engaging students of all backgrounds, and calling upon and honoring individual knowledge and perspectives. In this workshop, participants will model and practice a wide range of techniques as they learn how to use collaborative learning to engage all learners. Participants will leave this workshop equipped with powerful strategies on how to use group work effectively to solve the pedagogical challenges of today’s diverse classroom.

Fee: $75

W-6.  Working With Faculty to Develop SoTL: Teaching Projects, Assessment, Publication

Milt Cox, Greg Wentzell and Cecilia Shore, Miami University of Ohio

Thursday, October 25, 8:30 am – 12 pm

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is increasing in international interest and production, and faculty/educational developers are becoming involved with assisting faculty in developing classroom research projects that can lead to SoTL. In this workshop for developers, faculty, and administrators, we will learn about and share strategies that have proven successful in developing SoTL, from teaching projects and assessment of student learning to preparation for presentations and publication. We will discuss the results of a major survey that confirms the success of a community of practice approach to developing SoTL and the types of projects that were engaged by participating faculty.

Fee: $95
(Includes workshop fee and SoTL Handbook)

Afternoon Workshops

W-7.  Moving from Periphery to Priority: Peer Review of Teaching

Nancy Chism, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

Thursday, October 25, 1:00