Spring Break

My family and I took a trip to California last week for spring break. We stayed with some friends who live on the Pepperdine University campus in Malibu, and we used that as a base for exploring the Los Angeles area. We visited the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum, we strolled along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and we took our picture with the Hollywood sign. We also took the Coast Starlight train to San Francisco, which isn't a fast train, but the views along the California coast were amazing.

My favorite excursion, however, was a visit to Channel Islands National Park. That involved a one-hour boat ride out to Santa Cruz Island, during which we saw a pod of dolphins and a couple of gray whales, and then a cool, sunny day of hiking with the most amazing views. And we saw several island scrub-jays, a bird that only lives on Santa Cruz Island. It's related to the California scrub-jay which we saw on the mainland a few days later, but considered a separate species. The birding in California was fantastic, and I added 12 species to my life list, which is a pretty good number for birdwatching with three kids along for the ride!

Thanks to our visit to Channel Islands and a hike at Pinnacles National Park near San Francisco, I have now been to 24 of the 63 U.S. National Parks! They have all been delightful, and Channel Islands has to be in my top five favorites.

Students as Partners with Aimee Fleming and Maren Rice

While I was gone, the latest episode of the Intentional Teaching podcast dropped. It features an interview with Aimee Fleming and Maren Rice of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, who are both involved with a Students as Partners program there. Students as Partners programs have been on my radar for years now. These are programs that pair faculty with thoughtful students who provide input and feedback into the faculty member’s teaching and course design. The programs seem to have incredible benefits to the student partners, to the faculty partners, and to the faculty partner’s students, but I never figured out a way to get one started while I was at Vanderbilt.

Thanks to some conversation after a fireworks show during the 2023 POD Network conference, I learned that Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University has recently started a very popular Students as Partners Program. On the podcast, I talk with two people who know the program there well: Aimee Fleming, associate director for the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, or CTLE, at Embry-Riddle, and Maren Rice, student partner for the CTLE. We had a great conversation about the Students as Partners program, how it started, how it works, and what benefits it brings to all involved.

​You can listen to my conversation with Aimee and Maren here, or you can search for "Intentional Teaching" in your favorite podcast app.

Free Webinar on Teaching and Learning with Generative AI

The reason this newsletter is going out on Wednesday this week instead of its usual Thursday is that I wanted to let you all know about a webinar I'm leading tomorrow as part of the "Higher Learnings" series from Top Hat. It's called "How to Improve Teaching and Learning with Generative AI," and it's scheduled for Thursday, March 21st, from 1:00pm to 2:00pm Central. I'm very excited to be a part of this series (James Lang spoke at the last webinar) and to engage the Top Hat audience in a discussion about generative AI. I hear the text chat is incredibly lively at these events!

Here's the description of the event:

​You can register for this free webinar here.

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