WELCOME and THANK YOU for reading! This newsletter covers what happened in December and early January and will give you a heads up on what to look for in February and the months following.

In this issue (please note the links below will only work when viewing this newsletter in a browser):

Upcoming Board Meetings

First Wednesday of the month at 6:30 – 8:00 pm Eastern
Feb 7, Mar 6, Apr 3, May 1, Jun 5
Zoom information is available on the Member’s site

(Psst! You can visit the Academy Calendar on the Member's site and click to add the board meetings to your personal calendar!)

Academy members I hope that you have had an enjoyable holiday season and semester break while finding time to rest, recreate, and reflect on the many blessing we enjoy in our lives. Like many of you, a blessing I’ve have been thinking about this month is the importance of connections with family and close friends. I enjoy the opportunity to celebrate and gather with family and friends during this time of year. Children, grandkids, friends, and extended family all help me stay grounded. They help me find time to remember to pause and focus on what is really important. In many ways this is analogous with Process Educations’ focus on Reflection and Assessment.

Our annual Academy Conference will be held at the University of Indianapolis on June 11 -13, 2024. This year's theme is Unlocking Performance and Growth.

Conference registration and The Call for Proposals for sessions are now open on the PE Conference website.

We have added lodging options with a nice price at the selected "conference hotel". Check the Lodging section of the Location page for details!

Please consider joining us face to face in Indianapolis this June. The annual Conference is our greatest opportunity to meet colleagues and share ideas about continuously improving teaching and learning.

Come join us in a warm-up for the 2023 Conference by attending a one-day face to face workshop on Monday June 10th. Registration includes lunch and fellowship with a diverse array of conference goers. The workshop title is Assessment for Quality Improvement in Campus Learning Environments. Assessment is critical for growing life-long learning skills and elevating performance in diverse contexts. This workshop offers the opportunity to enhance formal and informal learning environments by recognizing the role of real-time and formative assessment as a catalyst for elevating teaching and learning performance.

University of Indianapolis, Jan 4, 2024

Present: Chaya Jain, Matthew Watts, Peter Smith, William Ofstad, Patrick Barlow, Steve Beyerlein, Tris U, Kathleen Burke, Christopher Sweeney, Grace Onodipe, Dan Apple, Mary Moore

Intro Icebreaker

• We spent some time contemplating ways to recruit new membership.
• Will shared a great document: https://memberclicks.com/blog/increase-membership/

Introduce the Mentoring Skills Book project (15 min) – Tris Utschig, Steve Beyerlein

• Tris gave an overview of Mentoring Skills project
• Also, pointed out some great reasons to contribute
• Raising Exceptions was selected for a “deep dive”, reflective exercise

Strategic Planning Session (90 min) – Patrick Barlow/Will Ofstad

•  Brief Review of Current Strategic Plan Goals
•  Strategic Anchoring Process– Based on “The Advantage” by Patrick Lencioni.
• We worked on identifying things we are already doing and new things we could do.

Annual Summer Conference Planning Update:

• Hotel/Lodging Options (Peter Smith)
  
  • Comfort Inn off I-65 looks good. $80/night or so
• Reviewed of the Current Agenda/Plans for the Conference (Patrick Barlow)
• Reviewed portal for session types/tracks
  http://www.processeducation.org/peconf/index.html
• Hall of Innovation Plans: Electronic display with remote support (George Dombi, Matthew Watts)
• Annual Academy Election Plans (Chaya Jain)
  
  • We reviewed the elections/offices open in June

Establish Spring Semester Board meeting Schedule

•   First Wednesday of each Month is chosen.

• The DRAFT minutes from the Winter Meeting are available HERE (on the Member Site).
• The DRAFT minutes from the December board meeting are available HERE (on the Member Site).

Strengths: identify the ways in which a performance was of high quality and commendable. Each strength statement should address what was valuable in the performance, why this attribute is important, and how to reproduce this aspect of the performance.

(from 4.1.9 SII Method for Assessment Reporting)

What can easily be forgotten in the rush to get to Areas for Improvement, is that the purpose identifying strengths shouldn’t be primarily about affirming the performer. It isn’t a compliment or a thumbs up, though it can be phrased and taken that way. It is, instead, a way to capture the aspects of performance that should be reproduced in future performances. And beyond this, HOW to reproduce those aspects. If Areas for Improvement is about MAKING gains, then Strengths is about PRESERVING gains.

This article will feature a different learning skill each month and instead of talking theory will ONLY give ideas for targeting/strengthening that learning skill for ages 2 to 102! Remember that you can find ALL the learning skills in a free interactive tool.

Measuring: producing accurate and precise readings from an instrument

Including (BUT NOT LIMITED TO)
workshops you'd like to attend!